


And I run from Wolves (Let the Human In)

by puppybusby



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Background Relationships, F/F, Found Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Vampires, Werewolf!Kara, Werewolves, all that jazz, canon is a ice cream bar and im making my own sundae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 58,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppybusby/pseuds/puppybusby
Summary: "Normal is totally overrated anyway." Lucy shrugged dismissively. "You're a badass werewolf working with a secret branch of the Government, by night you save people like some wannabe comic book hero and by day you work for a super cool company where you're in love with your boss. Sounds a lot more fun if you're asking me."Kara tried really hard (and mostly succeeded) at not choking on her coffee."I'm not in love!""And bigfoot is real." Lucy waved a hand dismissively before she hesitated. "Right? He's not real? Cause unless I get a solid answer on that one otherwise i'm going to have to insist we take a road trip when this is all over."
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Cat Grant
Comments: 50
Kudos: 149





	1. Danger knockin on my door

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy all!
> 
> So this is gonna be a long one, I'm hoping to have a relatively steady schedule for it but work and stuff so we'll see how it goes
> 
> Shoutout to Joy for being the best beta for dealing with my drunk ass and constant detours with ideas and helping me world build the shit out of this universe
> 
> Fic title is taken from "Wolves without Teeth" and "Human" by Of Monsters and Men  
> Chapter title is taken from "Monster" by Walking on Cars
> 
> Enjoy!

  
  
Kara was so focused on the conversation happening within Cat’s office, that she didn’t register Winn appearing beside her until he shook her shoulder gently.

“What are they talking about?” He asked, shooting a glance over his shoulder.

He didn’t need to have super hearing to know it wasn’t a good conversation. Cat’s posture was tense, expression one of barely concealed anger, the group of men she was addressing looked like they were ready to flee the room.

For a Monday morning, it had already been an incredibly stressful morning. First with the very public and loud firing of Derek, their sports editor which had ended with him being taken away by security as he made threats towards Cat and now this.

“A body was found this morning down by the docks,” Kara explained. “They couldn’t get any information from the cops on scene, they couldn’t even get close enough to get pictures. Ms. Grant is telling them that they need to try harder, that the whole thing reeks of coverup and it’s their duty to get that story.”  
  
 _“Now get me something to work with, or the next article you’ll read tomorrow will be an advertisement for your job!”_ _  
__  
_Kara winced as she felt the group collectively panic, and flee Cat’s office.

“And is it? A cover up, i mean.” Winn asked.

Kara nodded quickly. “Alex had to leave early this morning, she was called to a scene. It’s too much of a coincidence. And no, i don’t know what did it.” She added, guessing his next question.

Winn shut his mouth and nodded thoughtfully to himself. 

“I’ll tell you if i hear anything else, but Alex usually keeps me out of these things.” 

“But you could help!” 

Kara sighed. “I guess, but that isn’t our world, Winn.”  
  
“It’s your world, Kara.” He pointed out. “How long can Alex and those guys keep it under wraps before someone does get that story. Can you imagine what will happen if Cat of all people gets the scoop?”  
  
“Alex and J’onn put a lot of faith in the fact that no news outlet wants to be the one to declare that werewolves are real.” Kara couldn’t help but smile at the memory of Alex making that declaration.

Mostly because she’d been drunk at the time and attempted an impression of Cat- there was room for improvement. 

“As long as they don’t think it was you and lock you up somewhere.” Winn mumbled.

Kara frowned. Her nature wasn’t known by a lot of people, but Alex’s division had been nothing but good to her.

J’onn was a shapeshifter, for crying out loud. She was safer with them knowing her secret.

“The DSO are better than hunters.” Kara sighed. “At least they follow the laws.”

"With a name like 'Department of Supernatural Order', you'd forgive me for not having the most faith in them." Winn pointed out.

“Kiera!” Cat called. 

“Business calls.” Winn winked, pushing from Kara’s desk so he could wheel back over to his desk.

Kara made sure to grab her tablet before making her way into Cat’s office, Cat didn’t look up as she entered, instead she focused on rubbing her temples. Kara made a mental note to get some aspirin ready.

“Get Olsen up here.” Cat said. “Clearly I need someone with more than two braincells on the line if i’m ever going to get a coherent story around here.” 

“Right away Ms. Grant, was there anything else?”  
  
“Tell Witt that if he keeps distracting my assistant when she’s supposed to be working, I’ll personally throw the xbox he has hidden in the conference room from the roof.”

Kara had to fight back a laugh. “Of course.”  
  


\--

When it came to peoples heartbeats, there were only a handful she could pick up out of a crowd. Alex, naturally, was at the top of that list.

So when she heard it within the walls of CatCo, Kara knew something was wrong. 

When she heard it getting closer, clearly rising in the elevator, Kara felt anxiety pool in her stomach.

Alex made a point to limit her contact with Kara’s workplace, which was fair. Her cover was an FBI agent and if Cat realised that her assistant had a direct link to some juicy stories, it’d be game over for them.

She watched Alex step out of the elevator a few moments later, scanning the room briefly before locking onto Kara and walking over. She held power in the way she carried herself and Kara watched as heads swivelled in the bullpen, paying close attention to the newcomer. 

If the time did ever come where Alex would cross paths with Cat, she knew that Cat was going to get a run for her money.

“I need to talk to you.” Alex said, as soon as she reached her desk. “Privately. Now.”  
  
“Oh, okay yeah. Okay.” Kara glanced over at Winn, who was watching unapologetically, and looked over her shoulder to see Cat, thankfully oblivious for the time being. “If she looks for me-”  
  
“Your sister called, it was an emergency.” Winn finished for her, waving his hand. “Go, go. Use my hiding space.”

Kara took Alex’s arm and dragged her towards the elevators without another word, waiting for them to be safely inside before turning to her sister.

“What happened?”

“Not here.” Alex mumbled.

Once they were in Winn’s secret office (Well, an empty room with a dusty sofa) some of the tension in Alex’s shoulders eased, if only by the tiniest amount.

“What happened?” Kara asked again.

Alex swallowed. “I need your opinion on something” she held up a file, Kara hadn’t even noticed it in the rush. “But I need to warn you first, the pictures in here… they’re not… They’re bad, Kara.”

As far as Kara was concerned, it was a big deal that Alex had even reached out. And while she was touched by the protective big sister act Alex was still using, she didn’t want to have to point out that whatever was on those pictures, Kara had seen worse.

Experienced worse.

“I can handle it.” Kara said, holding her hand out.

She only had to wait for a few seconds for Alex to make peace with her choice, handing over the file without another word.

Kara took a breath to steady herself before she opened it and began to study each photo.

She forced herself to only focus on the facts. 

Human remains, young male, practically disemboweled. Skin torn to ribbons, limbs so tattered and torn, she had to wonder how they were still attached.

She swallowed.

“What do you need to know?”  
  
“I need to know what you think did it.”

“Why?” Kara asked. “It… The whole thing screams werewolf. You don’t need me to tell you that.”  
  
Alex pushed a hand through her hair and sat down beside her. “You haven’t picked up on any?”  
  
Kara shook her head. “I’d have told you.”  
  
She hadn’t exactly crossed paths with any since she was a teenager, but she still remembered what it felt like, being around her own kind. She wouldn’t have been able to ignore it. 

“The thing I need to know Kara, is if you think this was the work of one or more.”

“It’s hard to be certain.” Kara sighed. She closed the file and handed it back to Alex. “But it looks like one.”  
  
“Too much left over?”  
  
Kara winced. “That’s one way to put it.”

She could tell from Alex’s expression that there was something else, something else she needed to ask. There wasn’t much that gave Alex pause, especially not when it came to the topic of werewolves. So it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she wanted to say.

“I’m not the only wolf without a pack, Alex.” Kara sighed.

Yeah, it was rare. And yeah, every bit of lore they had dug up over the last eleven years seemed to imply that not having a pack causes werewolves to slowly go mad, but Kara had managed this long and she was fine.

Sure, she felt like there was a chunk of her heart missing. But Kara would also argue that was a side effect from being made an orphan. 

“Can you… come by the base after work?” Alex asked, gently shifting the conversation. “Before we commit to what we’re looking for, I just want to compare the claw marks to yours, see if we can work out a profile.”  
  
“Just look for the giant lump of fur running around.” Kara mumbled. “Is this the first body?”  
  
“At the moment, yeah.” Alex replied. 

“If you need any help…” Kara trailed off, letting her offer hang in the air.

Alex bumped their shoulders together. “We’ve got it under control, thank you though.”  
  
  


* * *

“Jesus Christ.” Alex whispered under her breath. 

She’d seen some shit over the years, but this was pretty close to getting into the top ten. 

The second they’d gotten the call, barricades and tents had gone up to conceal as much of the scene as possible. 

“It’s getting more confident.” Susan said as she reached Alex’s side.

“Not more confident.” Alex sighed, taking in the mangled bodies and streaks of blood. “Feral.”

It was three bodies today, three days since the first and only about five blocks from where the that body was found. There was a definite radius that they needed to be operating, now it came down to trying to narrow it down as much as possible. If Kara’s suspicions were right, and they were dealing with a werewolf that was able to reach its full shift, that just made it all the more dangerous. 

“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, i’d like to make a suggestion.” 

Alex raised an eyebrow at Susan. “Vasquez?”

“Would it be worth asking your sister to assist? Surely she could track the other wolf?”  
  
Alex would be lying if the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but there were so many risks involved in that. For their entire lives, Alex and Kara had tried so hard to minimise the risks, to make sure Kara was safe, from hunters and whoever else out there might want to hurt her. She deserved as much of a normal life as Alex could give her. And while Kara was happy to help out in small ways—offering her input on crime scenes and letting Alex take measurements of her claws—letting her into the DSO would open a door that Alex knew they wouldn’t be able to close again. 

If she could protect Kara from stepping into this life for as long as possible? She was going to do it, everybody else be damned. 

“I’ll see what J’onn says.” Alex replied eventually. 

Susan Vasquesz was a smart woman, and Alex was certain she didn’t buy the weak response one bit.   
  


* * *

“Ooh, bear claws!” 

Kara slapped Winn’s hand away before it came anywhere near the box, ignoring his yelp of surprise in favour of pulling the box away and shutting them in a drawer. 

“There’s a whole box of donuts for you to help yourself to right there.” Kara gestured at the heavy roll of Winn’s eyes. “The bear claws are for Carter!” She added. 

He came to the office a couple times every week, Tuesday’s, because of his science club after school, and Friday’s if he was going to be spending the weekend with his father. It had taken a while for Carter to warm to her, but now he’d always spend at least part of his time at her desk. Especially if Cat was in a meeting that was running late. When she’d worked out what his favourite baked goods were, she always made a habit of picking some up on that morning, even if she did wind up eating most of them in the end. 

“Are you busy, like right now?” 

“Pretty much always busy, Winn.” Kara pointed out. 

That was accurate now more than ever, it had been four days since the first body had been found and they were no closer to finding the creature who did it than they had at the start. The DSO had pretty much confirmed that it was a werewolf behind the actions, although based on the claw marks it was much larger than Kara was. It had been safe to assume that the person behind it was in a full shift state, which only made things scarier for Kara to think about.

With the full moon only four days away and a lunar eclipse in between, the body count was only going to get higher. Much higher.

Add that to the fact that Cat still hadn’t gotten any clear answers to publish. She’d already threatened to fire a dozen people this morning alone. And it was only 10am.

Cat wasn’t a person who dealt in theory or speculation and as a result that meant the biggest story unfolding in National City was barely being touched by CatCo beyond reporting the information that they did have. Which was painfully limited. 

It meant that Cat was sending out as many people as she could to focus on getting information, which meant Kara was responsible for making sure wires didn’t get crossed. 

“Superlair? Can you sneak away for a bit?” Winn asked. “I’ve been doing some digging.”  
  
“You need a better name for that office.” Kara sighed. “I’ll meet you there in ten.”

  
  
  


Kara was a little bit speechless as Winn pulled the sheet off of the board with a flourish, looking through the board as he went on a little speech to explain his work.

“So I got all the locations where each body was found and they’re all within around a five mile radius, which, okay, little bigger than we like but there’s a definite circle that this guy likes to work in.”  
  
“Don’t know for sure it’s a guy.” Kara pointed out. 

“Werewolf then.” Winn amended. “Either way, definite hunting ground?”  
  
Kara stepped closer to him to study the board, a red pin to represent each life that had been taken over the last week. There was a much larger amount around the docks, but there was a definite pattern of the attacks spreading further out, through the warehouse district and towards town.  
  
“Do you have the dates for each attack?” Kara asked. She traced the pattern of red. “Cause it looks like they started at the docks but they’re moving closer to more populated areas.”

“Sure, give me a minute.” Winn dropped onto the sofa and pulled his laptop out. “Isn’t that a bit risky though? Heading towards crowds of people?”  
  
“The full moon is in five days , Winn. If i’m right in my theory and this person has recently turned, then they’re not going to be in the right state of mind. They have no control over new instincts; they're basically…”

“Feral?”  
  
Kara tried not to physically react to the word. It was horrible to think, but that was the awful reality that she’d come to accept. Since moving to National City, other werewolves hadn’t been on her radar, but she had heard plenty of stories from Alex. Stories of people being turned and without someone to guide them through the experience, losing their minds and attacking blindly. Stories of lone survivors of packs, gunned down by hunters, ready to salt the earth because they felt they had nothing left to live for.

Kara pushed the thoughts down. It crossed her mind plenty of times that had she not found the Danvers, there would be a chance she would have fallen into that second category. 

“Yeah. That's one way to put it.” 

Winn shot her a curious look, clearly debating whether to press the matter or not, but ultimately decided against it.

“Has Alex mentioned anything about it?”

“Not really. Not that we know what we’re dealing with, I think she’s trying to shut me out.”  
  
“But you can help!” Winn protested. 

“She’s trying to keep me safe.” Kara pointed out.  
  
“By putting herself at risk.”  
  
“God, you don’t need to remind me of that. You think I like the idea of her facing a rogue werewolf? One that has no control is just as, if not more dangerous than one who has years of experience.”  
  
“How so?” Winn asked cautiously.  
  
“A werewolf in control knows when to cut their losses, when to run. A wolf without control? Has no fear, nothing to lose, no fight or flight. Just fight.” 

“Jesus.” Winn breathed. “Kara, we need to do something.”  
  
“What can we do, Winn?” Kara asked. “We can’t fight this thing.”

“I sure as shit can’t but last time i checked you were a badass werewolf yourself.”  
  
Kara frowned, but said nothing.

“Can you track them? If you went to the crime scenes or something?”  
  
Kara shook her head. “Too many people would have gone in and out of each scene, it’d be too hard to pick out a scent unless i knew what i was looking for.” She dropped down onto the sofa beside him. “So unless i donned a mask and started wandering the streets at night, it’d be a bit unlikely i’d find him.”  
  
Winn was silent for a moment and from the corner of her eye, she watched him open his mouth and lift a finger.

“I’m not going to wear a mask, Winn.”  
  
He closed his mouth and went back to typing.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, Winn typing away while Kara stared at the board, willing it to give them an answer when she picked up Cat’s voice a few floors above them.

 _“Where is Kiera? Seriously, do I need to chain her to this desk?”_ _  
__  
_“There’s my cue to leave.” Kara jumped to her feet. “You staying here?”

“Just for a few more minutes. I want to carry on trying to figure out a path of movement before the wolf got to the city.” 

“Come over tonight? We’ll get pizza and do it together, we can cover more ground that way.”

Winn pointed at her. “You had me at pizza.”

\--

“Oh there you are. I thought you’d fallen into a hole and died.” Cat said bluntly as Kara stepped into her office.

She watched Kara carefully as she approached her desk a series of layouts in her hand. 

“I was going over the layouts for the next issue and found a lot of typos. I took them back to have them corrected.” She placed them in front of Cat. “I asked Winn to have a look at their computers to see if there’s something wrong with their auto-corrects or if they’re just off their game today.” 

Cat was impressed, she generally was when it came to Kara. There were few things that Cat had asked of her assistant that Kara hadn’t managed to achieve. It was more impressive that everything Kara managed to do, was done without ever raising her voice.  
  
It certainly balanced them out well, she wasn’t certain she’d ever heard Kara’s voice slip into a tone above mildly annoyed.

“And why would you do that?” Cat asked. She reached over for her glasses.

“Because you have Carter tonight.” Kara shrugged, as though that explained everything. Cat supposed that in a way, it almost did. But when she raised an eyebrow at Kara, the woman fumbled, reaching up to adjust her glasses before continuing.

“Your schedule is pretty full today already, I’m not doubting your multitasking skills, but you wouldn’t have had a chance to really go through them until later this afternoon, and then waiting for the changes to be made and everything… You’d probably end up being here late and i assumed that you’d want to get out as soon as you could with Carter coming over.”

And caring, Kara seemed to care so damn much, about everybody who crossed her path. At first it used to grate on Cat- spent days wondering what the ulterior motive was. Nobody she had ever had in her life was ‘nice’ without expecting something in return.

But Kara, it seems, is just like that. Caring and thoughtful without ever expecting anything in return. It would make Cat’s days feel a bit brighter, when Kara turned her thoughts to her, or to Carter, who had grown to adore Kara.

Not that she would ever admit that out loud, obviously.

“Well Kiera, while i admire you using your initiative like that,” She paused as Kara grinned, honest to goodness _grinned._ “Never make assumptions of what I can and cannot do.”

The grin didn’t falter, even after the barb. “Won’t happen again.”  
  
That was a lie and they both knew it.

“Anything else you need Miss Grant?”

“Get Snapper in here, I want an update on where we’re at with the murders.”

Oh, now _that_ made the grin falter. It even brought the little crinkle that Kara gets between her eyebrows when there’s something troubling on her mind.

“I’ll go get him.” Kara replied and made a hasty retreat.

Interesting.

  
  


\--

  
  


“Hey Kara!” Carter greeted brightly, bouncing over to her desk.

“Hey Carter!” Kara replied, just as enthusiastically. “How was school?”

Carter didn’t answer right away, he turned his gaze towards his moms office. There were a group of people in there with her and she looked more than a bit frustrated. He stared until she met his gaze through the glass and only turned away, satisfied, when her eyes softened and she smiled at him.

“They shouldn’t be too long.” Kara said, she pushed a box of pastries across her desk towards him. There was even a chair already waiting for him. “You can hang out here if you want.”

Carter liked Kara, he liked that she genuinely enjoyed being around him, that she never tried to force him to make eye contact. Kara always seemed to know if he was having a bad mood and never tried to push him to make conversation during those moments.

On the worst days, when being around people felt like drowning, like even being near them was being hit with waves of emotions, when usually only his mom could make him feel better, Kara made it easier to breathe.

Carter knew he was different, that he wasn’t like other kids, and he knew Kara was something different too.

“I wonder what they’re talking about.” Carter said, throwing himself down into the chair and rummaging through his backpack for his homework.

“A story that your mom wants a lead on.” Kara answered quickly.

Carter lifted his head to stare questioningly at her. “How do you know that?”

The tips of Kara’s ears turned pink as she laughed loudly. It even made Winn look over at them with a frown. 

“I’m your moms assistant. I know everything.” Kara replied with a smile. She adjusted her glasses and snatched a bear claw from the box.

“Is it about the murders?” Carter asked.

Kara dropped the bear claw onto her keyboard. “You know about those?” 

"Kara, I'm thirteen, kids talk. Plus it's all over the news." 

Kara nodded. "Your mom wants to know what's happening, like everybody else. But you're safe, you know that right? The people looking into it, they're really good at their jobs. They'll find the person behind it." 

Carter nodded, he could practically feel the pride radiating off of Kara and he could tell that she truly believed that. It put whatever nerves that we're still lingering at ease. 

"Okay?" 

"Okay." 

"Do you want help with your homework?" 

"That'd be great." 

  
  


\-- 

  
  


When Alex made her way down the hallway to Kara’s apartment, a bag of takeout in one hand and a pack of beer in the other, she was more than ready to have a relatively peaceful night in catching up on some shows and having a couple of hours where she doesn’t have to think about the looming threat.

She had initially insisted on being with one of the teams assigned to patrol the area where the attacks had taken place, but J’onn had refused, sending Alex and Vasquez home to rest. But they had compromised, agreeing that she could take point as of tomorrow.  
  
It meant that tonight would be the last night she could have some time with her sister until after this was over. 

That also meant that there was a chance that she wouldn’t be able to be with Kara on the full moon, and while Alex hated that thought, she knew that Kara would be safe. Kara hadn’t shifted since they were kids and overall, she had a solid control over herself.  
  
But Alex knew that it was still hard on her, that all of her senses would be heightened no matter how much she tried to dampen them. It would put Kara on edge, make her snappy and easier to stress.

Hence the takeout and beer.

So it was a surprise when she walked through the door, only to see Kara and Winn freeze in place as they try to move what could only be described as a murder board- complete with maps, pictures and red string.

“What the fuck.”

“Alex!” Kara yelped. “Hi, i didn’t hear you coming.”

Which, considering Kara had enhanced hearing, was really saying something.

“What is that?” Alex pointed behind Kara.  
  
“I.... That's Winn?” 

Alex glared.  
  
“I’m just gonna…. Bathroom.” Winn mumbled, making a hasty retreat out of the room.

“Kara.”

Kara winced, out of habit she reached up to adjust her glasses, only to come up short when she remembered she wasn’t wearing them.

“It’s research.” She admitted.

“Kara.” Alex sighed, moving fully into the room to drop her stuff on the coffee table. “You can’t get involved in this.”  
  
“The full moon is next Wednesday!” Kara protested. “The person doing this is only going to get more dangerous.”  
  
“But that’s what i’m here to do, you have to leave this to the DSO, Kara.” Alex paused to look at the board closer, realising a few moments later that it wasn’t a map of National City. “What is this?”

“Me and Winn have been trying to figure out the wolf’s movements before they came to the city, missing persons and everything.” Kara replied. “To see if we can identify them.”

“But why?”  
  
Kara shrugged, pouting at the floor. “There has to be a reason why they came to the city.”

“It’s a bigger hunting ground, Kara. This wolf is clearly out of control, it’s come to where the numbers are, easier pickings. It won’t care about being caught.” Alex walked over to Kara and squeezed her hand. “It’s good work Kara, it really is, and i appreciate that you’re trying to help, but the more involved you get, the more risk there is of you being identified.”  
  
Almost on cue, a car drove past outside, the headlights dancing around the living room and for a moment, Kara’s eyes reflected green. Alex was used to seeing it more than anybody else, but it still left her silent for a moment. Even after the light had gone and Kara’s eyes had returned to their gentle blue, something dark remained in her expression and Alex understood why the second Kara opened her mouth.

“The more damage this wolf does, the bigger the target that gets painted on this city.” Kara said, voice startlingly even. “That means more creatures will come here. It means hunters will come. If hunters come, then it won’t matter what I do. You can’t run from them forever.”  
  
It was a look of haunting, the look Kara would often get when thinking back to the time before they became sisters. The look that Kara held for months after she settled into the Danvers home.

“Kara… Do you trust me?” Alex asked.

Kara looked genuinely offended. “With my life.” She answered without hesitation.

Alex squeezed her hand. “Then trust me to do this right, to stop this wolf, to keep the hunters away. To keep you safe, okay?”  
  
“But who will keep you safe?” Kara asked.

Alex pulled her into a hug. “I got a whole team of agents watching my back, Kara. Just let me watch yours.”  
  
Kara pulled her in closer. But didn’t say anything. Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that Kara wasn’t going to give up that easily and the thought scared her more than the rogue werewolf.  
  
“I’ve got tonight, can we just… Relax? For a few hours?” Alex asked.

“Did you bring pot stickers?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Kara was silent for a few more moments before she pulled away, glancing over to the bathroom. “Should i tell Winn it’s safe to come out?”  
  
Alex grabbed a beer and cracked it open. “Give it five minutes. Let him sweat.” 

  
  


\--

James adjusted the volume of the police scanner on his dashboard and reclined his seat back a bit further.

It felt good to hit the streets again, it had only been a few weeks since he had moved to National City and while it was an adjustment to be working underneath Cat Grant and to be away from everybody he knew back in Metropolis, it had been an opportunity he couldn’t have missed. And while most of his time had been spent telling other people what to do, being the point of call for any pieces that needed his eyes, everybody had been welcoming to him. It helped to have Kara around, having met her a few times before whenever she’d been in town to meet Clark, but they had yet to have a proper chance to connect, due to their respective workloads and more recently, current events.

But Cat wanted results, and it was hard to get those when they didn’t have a clear point to start. But like Cat, James knew that whatever was going on here, was even bigger than a potential serial killer.

He had the most experience of his team, so he made the decision to take the lead on this.  
  
Which was how he found himself parked a couple blocks outside of the temporary barricade from the last crime scene, scanner listening out and camera in the passenger seat.

He was going to get the picture that broke this story, no matter what. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You can’t blame yourself for this, Danvers.” J’onn said from behind her.  
  
Alex stared into the medical bay at the group of other agents receiving treatment. It had been a miracle that out of the whole team, there had only been one fatality and the initial prognosis was promising for the others.  
  
“It’s been hunting for a week and we’re no closer to finding it.” Alex replied. “The eclipse is tonight. We’re out of time.”  
  
J’onn stepped forward to rest a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “It’s not too late. We will find this creature.”  
  
Alex sighed, it had been a long night and she knew she’d have to repeat it again in a few hours. She was running on fumes at this point.  
  
“You should go, get some rest. Check in on Kara.” J’onn continued.  
  
Kara. Who had to deal with the first night of this lunar cycle on her own. Alex hoped that she had managed to sleep. She should probably stop by her apartment on the way home to see if she was okay.  
  
But Alex didn’t want to leave this, the daylight would be the best chance they had to comb through the area to try and find the wolf, but they had been doing that since day one to no avail, wherever they were hiding, the DSO hadn’t been successful in finding it.

“Go.” J’onn urged. “If yours and Kara’s theories are right, you’re going to need all the rest you can get for tonight.”  
  
Alex cast one last look at her team, before nodding. On her way to her lockers she pulled out her phone to send a quick text to Kara.

\--

Kara was already on her third coffee when Alex texted her. She had managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but every time a car passed outside, it felt like it was driving through her living room.  
  
Despite being this all her life, Kara still hadn’t figured out how to dull her senses during the full moon. Everything felt too loud, too much, it was a nightmare.  
  
The caffeine wouldn’t help her anxiety as the day wore on, but without it, Kara wasn’t certain that she’d be able to function through work.  
  
Kara unlocked her phone to read the message.  
  
 _You up?_ _  
__  
_Kara settled for calling instead, Alex picked up after only two rings. Kara put the phone on speaker and placed it on the counter.

“Are you okay?” Kara asked.

 _“Bad night. You?”_ _  
__  
_“I’ve had worse.” Kara sighed. “What happened?”  
  
“It got away again. I lost one agent, four others are being treated for their injuries.”  
  
“Are you hurt?”  
  
 _“No. I was checking in with the other team when it happened.”_  
  
Kara let out a sigh of relief. If Alex had gotten hurt while she was holed up in her bedroom? She’d never forgive herself.  
  
“Alex… What are we going to do? It’s the eclipse tonight. The wolf is going to be at its most dangerous tonight.”  
  
 _“I am going to get some rest. J’onn is sending a team out to comb the warehouses now and tonight me and Vasquez are taking two bigger teams. We’re not going to let anybody else get hurt.”_  
  
If anything it made the pit of anxiety in her stomach worse, knowing that Alex was going to be out there again tonight.

 _“Are you coping okay?”_ Alex asked.

“Everything is so loud.” Kara sighed. “But i’m coping. Don’t worry about me Alex.”  
  
“ _Never gonna happen. You’ll call me if you need me?”_  
  
“Of course.”  
  


  
  
\--

“Kiera.” Cat snapped, watching as Kara visibly flinched and looked up from her iPad to Cat. “Did you get any of that?”

“Sorry, yes. I’ll cancel you 2pm and have your 4pm brought forward.” She looked back down at the iPad and typed a few more notes down.  
  
Cat narrowed her eyes and stared across the office at Kara. it had been like this all day. Usually, Kara would almost anticipate what Cat needed, would be chattering away all day with the other staff and generally have an energy about her where everybody felt they could approach her.

Today was so different. Kara almost seemed to curl in on herself and when she thought people weren’t looking, she seemed to press her fingers to her temples.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar site. Over the last couple of years Cat had noticed that Kara seemed to have a predisposition to migraines, even if she had never taken a sick day. Although Cat knew it had never been to the extent she seemed to be suffering through now. 

“Kiera, if you’re not well you should just go home. I don’t pay you to be a dead weight.” Cat said.

If Kara noticed that she had dropped her voice down as quiet as she could, she didn’t acknowledge it.

“I’m fine Ms. Grant.” Kara flashed a smile that barely reached her eyes and stood up. “Is there anything else you need?” 

Cat waved a hand dismissively. “Another latte, and tell that barista it better be scalding.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
She watched Kara go, stopping by her desk to drop off her tablet and speak to the IT Goblin. Even from her own seat, she could see his expression etched in concern as they spoke for a few moments. The way he reached up to squeeze her arm in comfort before Kara retreated.

\--

When Kara made her way back to her desk after her lunch, Winn waved a hand to catch her attention.

“Cat dropped some files on your desk.”  
  
“Did she say what they were for?”  
  
Winn raised an eyebrow. Okay yeah, stupid question.

“You still look really rough.”

“Yeah well, not many quiet places to hide. Even your lair can only do so much.” She sat down and skimmed over the papers Cat had left her. Paperwork for HR, Cat really had gone through with firing John in finance it seemed. 

When she put them down, her eyes caught the small packet next to her mouse. Aspirin?

“Did you put these here?” Kara held up the box for Winn to see.  
  
“No? I didn’t think they’d work for you.” Winn replied with a frown. 

Kara turned the box over in her hands a few times before she looked over into Cat’s office. Her head was down as she wrote, after a few moments, Cat lifted her head and met Kara’s gaze. She tried to smile even as Cat’s gaze remained carefully impassive.

\--

“Wow, you look as bad as I feel.” James greeted as he reached kara’s desk.

Kara scrunched her nose as she smiled up at him. “Long night?” She asked.

He perched on the edge of her desk. “I’ve been down by the docks the last few nights.”  
  
Kara’s eyebrows shot up as she moved her chair closer. “You trying to break the story?”  
  
Her tone was light, but James didn’t miss the undercurrent of tension in her voice.  
  
“Trying is the operative word.” He glanced into Cat’s office and saw her looking down at her laptop, her hair shifting into place as though he just missed her gaze. “Feels like i’m on a stakeout every night. Police scanner doesn’t make for good company though.”  
  
Kara’s brows drew together thoughtfully, looking past him for a moment. “Are you hearing any reports on there?”  
  
This time it was James’ turn to frown. Now that she’d mentioned it, he had heard gunfire this morning, but the scanner remained ominously silent. Over the few days, when the report did come to life declaring the bodies, there was already a blockade in place, despite him only being a few minute walk from each location.

“Like i said, not the best company.”

  
“Would it-” She cut off for a moment and looked past James again. He realised that she was looking at Winn, even if he was making a show of pretending not to be paying attention to them. “Can I come with, tonight? If you don’t mind the company that is, i know we’ve been really busy the last few weeks so it might be nice to catch up and I won’t distract you and i’ll bring snacks and i’ve been wondering what it’s like to be in the field and-”  
  
“Considering following in Clark’s footsteps?” James asked, cutting her off. At Kara’s sheepish smile he held his hands up. “It might be boring, but as long as you can tell me embarrassing stories from Clark’s childhood, of course you can come.”

Kara grinned. “I’ll bring donuts.” 

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll pick you up from your place around eight?” 

\--

“What. The. Hellllll.” Winn hissed as soon as James had disappeared into Cat’s office. “What are you doing?”  
  
Kara covered her face with her hands and willed herself to focus on his voice, to block out the noise around them. “If it’s this bad for me right now, how bad is it for the wolf, Winn? Alex is going to be out there tonight. James isn’t hearing anything on the scanner because the DSO are running it.” She rubbed her forehead and stared longingly at the aspirin still sitting untouched. God, she wished they would work.  
  
“Agents were hurt last night, and i can’t risk that happening to Alex. If i’m nearby, with James- I can listen for the wolf, if something happens i can intervene.”  
  
“How do you plan on intervening if you’re with James?” Winn asked.

“I… I’ll have to cross that bridge when i get to it.” Kara said eventually.

  
  


\--

“Okay squad.” Alex checked her sidearm before reaching for her rifle. “Ground rules, you’ve all been assigned to teams of three. Under no circumstances do you break away from your team. You all have your assignments, and i expect updates every thirty minutes. If you so much as _hear_ it, alert us. Flashbangs will disorient it, aim to injure but shoot to kill if necessary. Too many lives have already been lost to this creature, i am not risking you all too. Understand?”

A chorus of affirmative responses chorused out and the group spent another few moments checking over their gear before splitting into the teams and away from their recon point.

She wished she’d called Kara before leaving.

“You ready?” Vasquez asked.

Alex let out a long breath. “Let’s do this.”

  
  


\--

For as useless as the police scanner was, it didn’t matter.  
  
Kara could _hear_ Alex. She had been casting out her senses until she picked up the tail end of her speech, locked onto her heartbeat and was now listening to it as she moved around the docks. She knew it was Vasquez who was with her along with another agent whose heartbeat she didn’t recognise.

“So there we were, hiding in the alleyway thinking of how we were going to explain it to Perry White the next day, when Lois walks up out of nowhere and spins this massive story about how we were authorised press and just like that our asses were saved.” James laughed into his coffee.

Kara grinned and reached for a donut. It was nice hearing about some of Clark’s adventures in Metropolis. They made a point to text and there were calls from time to time. he used to visit a few times a year but over the last couple years the visits had gotten fewer and far between.

She’d tried to tell him about their childhood, but after a few half hearted stories she’d fallen silent. It was too hard for her to repurpose them for ears that didn’t know her secret. Too hard to think back to that time while her sister was walking through a hunting ground.

“Sounds like Clark.” Kara replied. “Me and him definitely share a penchant for running into a plan that’s half formed.”  
  
“Is that so?” James asked. “Wouldn’t have thought that of you.”  
  
Kara shrugged. “I’m getting better. But if my heart tells me to do something, it’s hard to ignore it.”  
  
“That’s good.” James nodded. “Passion is important. Is that why you wanted to be here tonight? Do you want to be a reporter?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Kara shrugged, she fiddled with the drawstrings of her hoody. “This case has everybody on edge, it feels like… I think I felt like I had to be here.”  
  
James looked at her curiously but nodded. “Sounds like a reporters way of thinking.”

They sat in a companionable silence for a few minutes. Kara heard the first team of agents checking in to give their reports and tried to use Alex’s heartbeat to map out where she was. It was quieter than before, getting further from her listening range. But it was still calm, still strong.

Kara glanced up at the sky at the moon, full and bright and in a few minutes, the eclipse would be starting. The thought of it made her bones ache.

She was so focused on Alex’s heart and the glow of the moon, that the heartbeat that raced by underneath her startled her so much that even James visibly flinched, looking to her in surprise.

It had been a long time since she had sensed another wolf, a part of her never thought she’d have this experience again. But whenever she had been around her family she felt warmth and home. Now, with this wolf’s presence, it felt unnatural, like her space was being invaded.

“Are you okay?” James asked.

Kara focused on the new heartbeat. Underground? Had it been hiding in the sewers this whole time?

“Yep. Yeah, sorry. I thought I heard a noise.” Kara shifted in her seat. “Hey there was a McDonald's down the block right?”

“...Yeah?”  
  
Kara was already reaching for the handle. “I’m gonna take a bathroom break, i’ll be right back.”  
  
“Kara-” James’s words were lost to her as she closed the door behind her. She started to walk away from the car until she was certain she was out of James’s sight. As soon as she was, she pulled her hood up over her head and pulled the strings as tight as she could.  
  
As she tucked her glasses into her pocket, she picked out Alex’s heart rate, tried to judge the distance between hers and the wolf. 

When she heard the sound of claws scraping against metal, Kara started to run.

\--

They had tried to anticipate every possibility, and yet the moment they heard something metal and heavy hit the ground behind them, Alex knew it was too late.

She and Vasquez hadn’t even turned around before the wolf had grabbed Agent Jones, claws tearing through his side with a sickening amount of ease.

“Fire!” Alex yelled, despite knowing Vasquez didn’t need to be told twice.

They took their stances and opened fire and god, the wolf was even bigger than they had originally thought. A giant hulking beast that covered the entirety of Jones’s frame. His screams were muffled amongst the bullets and roars.

“Vasquez, flashbang!”  
  
Susan pulled one from her vest and threw it towards the wolf as Alex reached up to activate her earpiece.

“We have contact! Team B, to our location, now! All other teams, head to the perimeter.” She turned her gaze away to shield her eyes from the blast, grimacing at the roar that left the wolf.

She pushed back any thoughts of Kara as she prepared to fire again, horrified to see the wolf push from the ground towards her and Vasquez. The pair of them dived in opposite directions to avoid its claws.

Vasquez let out a yelp of pain as it swatted her away, Alex rolled into a crouch and fired again, watching as the bullets sank into flesh but did nothing but agitate it further.

Ice blue eyes locked with hers, blood and saliva dripping from its teeth, gore clinging to matted black fur. The moment only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it was more than enough for her to take in every inch of its easily eight foot build.

She had hoped for a sign of humanity, but there was nothing but a monster behind those eyes.

And then it was launching for her.

Alex tried to turn, to at least minimise what damage it was about to do to her, hoped that when her body was found, it wouldn’t be too bad, that Kara wouldn’t be too traumatised when she found out.

A second roar joined the mix and Alex barely had time to register what she had heard before a much smaller figure, cloaked in black appeared from her peripheral vision, tackling the wolf with a level of strength no human could be capable of. It didn’t stop the claws from connecting with Alex’s left arm, or from the momentum of the attack knocking her to the ground.

But it was enough to save her life.

Alex could only watch as the figure and the wolf barrelled to the ground, rolling a few times before the wolf managed to pull away, dropping to the ground ready to pounce again.

The figure was crouched low to the ground, back towards Alex as they stared down the wolf. She could see the claw marks in their hoody, blood already beginning to seep through, their own claws sliding out as they stood between Alex and the wolf. 

No.

The wolf pounced and the figure leapt towards them, the two colliding again and tangling into a flurry of swipes and snarls. 

No no no.  
  
The wolf threw the hooded figure into the wall of a warehouse and it was only in that moment, Alex saw the light of golden eyes from underneath the hood, the blonde curls.

_Kara._

The wolf was bleeding heavily, a gash in its throat that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier, a clear limp to one of its legs.  
  
“Kara!” Alex yelled.

Kara roared, a sound that Alex knew she had never heard before and while the wolfs roar held nothing but animalistic rage in it, Kara’s was different, angry and desperate and warning all at once.

Vasquez had gotten to her feet and fired a hailstorm of bullets into the wolfs back and had it been anybody else, Alex would have been terrified of the prospect of Kara getting hit.  
  
But damn if Vasquez wasn’t one hell of a shot. 

The wolf howled and ran, Kara glanced at Alex for a moment and from the distance, it was impossible to read her expression.

“I’m sorry.” Was all Kara said before she was sprinting after the wolf.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Alex pressed her earpiece as she and Vasquez ran towards Jones. “Hostile is heading south, everybody converge there, protect the civilians. Another wolf is in pursuit, wearing a black hoody. Do _not_ engage. I repeat. Do not engage.”

“Go.” Vasquez urged. “I’ve got Jones.”  
  
Alex didn’t need to be told twice, as she sprinted after her sister.

  
  


\--

Kara threw herself at the wolf's back, sinking her claws in as deep as she could into its shoulders and pushing back the wave of nausea at just how easy it was for her to do so.  
  
They were heading directly towards where she had left James and there were far too many stores open, too many people who could be caught in the crossfire.

All she could smell was blood mixed with fear and rage. She knew Alex was behind her somewhere, her thundering heart in pursuit of her. 

They crashed into the walls of the alley as the wolf tried to throw her off, Kara felt her bones crack and the strain of her healing as it tried to keep up with the amount of damage being dealt to her even as the adrenaline in her veins forced her to keep going.  
  
As they approached the end of the alley, the same she had taken to reach Alex, the wolf reared up, reaching behind it to grab Kara and throw her.

She connected hard with the ground, skidding across it and coming to a heavy stop in the middle of the street.

The wolf stood at its full height before her, the sight was terrifying. Even to her eyes.

She had never seen a wolf this big before, whoever they were as a human, they must be tall for it to transfer this much over. 

There was no trace of humanity there though, nothing that she could appeal to. All she could do was fight back and stop anybody from getting killed.

The wolf snarled at her and Kara met the sound with one of her own, flexing her hands as she prepared for another round. 

“We have a visual on the target.” A voice somewhere to the side yelled.

There was a flash of light, and then another from somewhere behind her.

“Somebody stop that photographer!”  
  
Kara’s entire body felt like it was coiling, fight or flight instincts prepping her with another surge of adrenaline.

“Open fire!” Alex voice yelled out, clear as anything from behind the wolf, and Kara could only watch as it was gunned down in front of her. The sheer amount of bullets fired was deafening and if not for the eight foot risk five feet from her, Kara would have covered her ears. 

The wolf let out a pained howl and dropped face first in front of her, revealing Alex standing behind it, her rifle long abandoned but her sidearm still trained on its form.

Kara was frozen to the spot, finally glancing around to see the area, thankfully clear of civilians, but full of DSO agents. She tried not to let it bother her that there were some who had their guns trained on her and Kara quickly withdrew her claws, dropping her gaze to make herself feel as least threatening as she could manage.

She listened as Alex’s heartbeat got closer before she was being tackled into a bone crushing hug.

“You scared the shit out of me.” Alex whispered into her hood.  
  
Kara hugged her back. She knew that she was shaking and that Alex could feel it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to do it.”  
  
“Don’t, we’ll… We’ll talk about that later.” Alex hugged her tighter. “Fuck, i thought that was going to be it for me, for you.”  
  
Kara felt the tears falling from her eyes. “I couldn’t sit at home and risk you getting killed. I love you.”  
  
“I love you too, Kara. But… You know you need to come back to The DSO now, don’t you.”  
  
Kara nodded. “I know.”  
  
“It’ll be okay, i promise.”

  
  
  
\--

  
  


“I gotta say pup, that was pretty badass.” Vasquez spoke up from her spot in the med bay.  
  
She was lucky to be walking away with a small gash on her forehead. 

Alex looked over to where Kara was sat, knees drawn up to her chin on her own bed, still in her own clothes despite them being torn and bloody. She hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten into the van and wouldn’t let any of the doctors near her, insisting that her healing was taking care of it. 

Kara’s lips quirked upwards the smallest amount but she didn’t look away from where the nurse was carefully stitching up Alex’s arm.

Vasquez got up, rolling her shoulders with a grimace. Before she left, she approached Kara and gave her a soft pat on her shoulder, not showing any kind of reaction when Kara flinched.

“You did good tonight, you saved our lives. Don’t forget that.”  
  
 _That_ got a reaction from Kara. Who blinked a few times in quick succession.  
  
“Thank you Vasquez.” She replied shakily.

Susan nodded, and looked over to Alex. “Ma’am.”  
  
Alex nodded back at her and a few minutes after she left, a bandage was secured around her arm and it was just Alex and Kara left in the room.

“Are you mad at me?” Kara asked eventually.

There had never been a point in lying to Kara. Every time she ever had, her heart had betrayed her words and Kara would know immediately.

“A little.” Alex admitted. She got up from her bed and moved to sit on Kara’s, crossing her legs so that she could face her directly. “Mostly because I tried to keep you out of this, for your own safety.”

“He would have killed you.” Kara whispered.  
  
“I know.” Alex gave Kara’s knee a comforting squeeze. “Vasquez was right, Kara. You saved our lives tonight. Do I like that you threw yourself into a fight with a fully shifted werewolf? No. But that doesn’t mean i’m not thankful you did.”

It was conflicting, trying to keep Kara out of it had gotten them nowhere, if anything doing so might have put Kara into more danger. She knew that Kara would have kept investigating, but she hadn’t put much time into considering that Kara would willingly throw herself into a fight to keep her safe.

Which was her own fault. The action was so very much Kara, she can’t blame her for that. Alex knew she should have planned for that happening.

“What happens now?” Kara asked and as she spoke the words, she seemed to curl in on herself more. Kara always looked younger when she wasn’t wearing glasses, but like this? She looked so vulnerable it hurt. 

“You’re not in trouble, Kara. You’re only here until you heal. Then I can take you home and you can go back to work tomorrow if you really want to.”  
  
Kara finally met her gaze. “What?”  
  
“Did you really think we were going to lock you up?” Alex asked. “You’re not a threat Kara, you didn’t even shift during the fight. You’re fine.” she squeezed her sisters hand.  
  
The tension visibly left Kara’s body, as she finally relaxed, flipping her hand to thread her fingers through Alex’s.

“But as for after this… I don’t know. it's probably best to let the dust settle a little bit, don’t you think? Give you, me and J’onn some time to think about where we go from here.”  
  
Kara squeezed her hand tighter, and Alex felt the pain from her arm fading. She glanced down to see Kara’s veins darkening, but didn’t make an attempt to pull her hand free, knowing that Kara would have no intention of letting go.

It was an ability Alex had seen Kara use the most, usually on herself. Absorbing someone else's pain.

“You don’t need to do that Kara, you have enough pain of your own right now.”  
  
Kara smiled. “What’s a little more?” 

  
  


\--

James threw his bag down by his door as soon as the door closed behind him as he made a beeline directly for his desk. He busied himself with plugging his camera into his computer as he waited for it to boot up.

He pulled out his phone to read the text Kara had sent him less than an hour ago.  
  
 _Sorry, sister called, emergency- see you tomorrow?_

He frowned and threw his phone behind him onto his bed and loaded the pictures onto his computer and began clicking through them.

The first few were too dark, too blurry. He knew he could probably clean them up a bit, but it was the last two he was more interested in. 

The first was something to behold. A giant wolf like creature filling the alleyway, the streetlights highlighting the blood in its fur perfectly. The eyes so bright and blue even looking at it on a screen sent a chill down his spine. The hooded figure blocking part of the view, claw marks stretching down their back. The flash from his camera reflecting from their claws. 

Cat was going to lose her mind when she saw it.

Swallowing, James clicked to the next picture.  
  
It had been taken a mere few seconds after the first, only in this one, the hooded figure had their head turned to the side, catching a brief glimpse of their profile. The blonde curls peaking out from under the hood, the lips curled into a snarl.

The reflection of golden eyes.  
  
James ran a hand over his face and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out the glasses he’d found on the way back to his car, one lens was completely missing and the other was cracked.  
  
But there was no mistaking who they belonged to. 

  
  


\--

_“I have to say, the wolfsbane was a lot more effective than I had originally hoped. I’ll need to run a few more experiments the fine tune the mixture and method of delivery however.”_

Non understood the unspoken request immediately. “I’ll get you more subjects, don’t worry about that.”  
  
 _“I’m assuming your wolf didn’t survive?”_ _  
__  
_“No. Those humans, they were prepared. They had silver bullets, who are they?” Non asked.  
  
He had tried to follow the battle as much as he could but had found himself limited by having to stay out of range of Jonah.  
  
The kid had been a complete waste of space in the short time he had been in the pack, sending him on this mission had been the most useful he had been in weeks, even if he didn’t realise it when he scouted ahead into National City. 

_“They’re a small branch of the Government. The DSO. ‘Department of Supernatural Order.’ Very limited bases of operations, but they’re dedicated to keeping your world hidden from public.”_ _  
__  
_Non growled, they’re no better than the hunters, as far as he was concerned. In fact, they were worse considering what else he had learned tonight.

“There’s one more thing,” Non began. “They have a wolf.”  
  
There was silence on the line for several moments, the only sound was the steady breathing from Non’s ally. 

_“You’re sure?”_ He asked.

“Very.” Non confirmed. “I was too far away to get a scent, but I saw part of their encounter. No human could have fought and stood a chance like that.”  
  
 _“That certainly makes matters more interesting.”_ came the response, surprisingly amused by the revelation. _“We’ll see how things play out. I’ll be in contact soon enough, Non.”_ _  
__  
_The line went dead and Non sighed before putting his phone away and continuing his journey back into the depths of the forest just outside of National City.

They had found and claimed a cabin as their home for the foreseeable future. He knew why it had been chosen, it bore an undeniable likeness to the home that had been lost years ago.

As he finally approached the cabin, the door flew open, his partner giving him an appraising look as she glanced around.

Twelve years had passed and Astra still couldn’t let go, clinging to the scorched memories of that night and a blind optimism that had led them up and down the country more times than Non could count.

“Non, where is Jonah?” Astra asked.

“Dead. Humans found him.”  
  
Astra looked away, her gaze focusing through the trees. “I should not have sent him alone.”  
  
“These humans were prepared, Astra. We must fight back.”  
  
Astra shook her head. “Not yet. We need to be ready. This is their territory, not ours. I am not willing to send my pack blindly to their deaths.” 

She closed the door behind her, a pointless act, considering all those within would hear each word should they be awake.  
  
“We will mourn for our lost brother and regroup. We need to scout, find where they operate from.”  
  
Non nodded. “Whatever you think is best.”

He looked forward to finding the wolf that would willingly align themselves with humans, that would willingly turn their back on their nature.

  
  
He looked forward to snapping their neck. 


	2. The game commences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the confrontation at the docks, Kara tries to monitor the fallout from CatCo. while Alex and the DSO work to contain the situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little early posting this one but hey ho, lets go
> 
> Chapter title from "Private Investigator" By Dire Straits

Kara couldn't help but fidget with her glasses as she stepped out of the elevator. They were the exact same style as the ones she had lost during the fight last night and yet they felt _wrong._

They felt stiff and unfamiliar on her face and it was frustrating her to no end. 

Kara was just glad that she'd mostly recovered from her injuries, all that lingered was a few aches and an occasional itch from where the last of the scabs from the claw marks down her back were still healing. 

She headed straight into Cat's office to put her latte on her desk and went back to her own to wait for her arrival. 

Kara scrolled through the news on her phone. There had been a small announcement in the early hours of the morning to alert everyone that the killer had been caught and killed during a standoff. Intentionally vague and full of DSO involvement.

She already knew that today was not going to be a good day. 

\--

“You got a minute?” J’onn asked.

Alex had been wondering how long it would take for this conversation to happen.  
  
Turned out, the answer was four minutes. 

She followed him through the halls until they reached his office, as she closed the door behind her, Alex watched J’onn shifting some paperwork around. Alex often had her own share of paperwork to do everyday, but it never matched the amount that J’onn would have to suffer through. She definitely wasn’t envious about that. 

“Is it about Kara?” Alex asked.  
  
“We’ll get back to her,” J’onn replied. “We’re working with the NCPD to hold a press conference at noon to tell people what was behind the murders.”  
  
Alex shifted forward in her seat. “What are they going to say?”  
  
“At the moment, not much. Originally it was going to be an unidentified white male, mid to late twenties. They planned on releasing a sketch in the hours following so that we can try to get a positive ID.”  
  
Alex nodded along, it all seemed standard procedure. None of it felt relevant to her though which did nothing to ease her confusion.

“Originally?” Alex asked.

“But we have a problem.”  
  
Ah. There it is.

“Several reports of the other agents claim they saw several flashes of light and that there was a photographer on scene prior to the wolf being shot down.” J’onn sighed. “Due to the situation, nobody pursued them.”

“And if they have a picture of the wolf....” Alex trailed off.  
  
Or worse, of Kara.  
  
“It risks exposing us all. It’s a lot harder to explain away an eight foot creature when there’s photographic evidence. We’re lining up experts who will discredit the photo if needed.”  
  
“I’m guessing an animal attack angle is too difficult to sway?”

“Very much. I have agents combing through security footage to try and find the photographer. But we need to get ahead of this, that photo will put us all at risk, and if Kara was caught too?”

Alex sighed, this was quickly becoming her worst nightmare.

“Alex. We will need to talk about Kara at some point, but it will have to wait until we can contain this.” He pushed a stack of files towards her. “I need you to get up to speed, I'll join you shortly but I’m expecting a call from the General.” He made a disgruntled sound that she wanted to echo.

General Lane was not the kind of person that she wanted anywhere near her.

Alex left the office to make a beeline towards Vasquez. She’d have to wait to call Kara, knowing full well that her sister would just be about to settle into Cat’s office for the morning meeting. 

  
  


\--

“I’ve just been made aware that the chief of police is making a statement at noon. Snapper, get somebody down there to get quotes and send one of the vans. I want live coverage of this. I want our researchers ready to jump the _second_ we get a name, a picture. Anything that will give us a lead on this killer's identity. James, send somebody too. Get some pictures of the conference.”  
  
Cat hadn’t wasted any time in doing what she did best, leading her kingdom and directing them to the heart of a story.  
  
Kara tried to catch James’s eye a few times as Cat spoke, but he steadfastly avoided her gaze.  
  
He’d never replied to her text last night either, she understood if he was mad at her, but Kara hoped that she would be able to catch a moment alone with him later on to apologise in person. It was the least she could do. 

Kara made a few more notes as Cat finished delegating, hoping to make things smoother for herself when she’d inevitably have to chase everybody up later on. 

Kara was still finishing her notes when Cat dismissed everybody. 

“Actually Cat, if you’ve got a minute?” James interrupted, Kara looked up from her tablet in time to catch his gaze. “There’s something I want to show you.” 

He made no attempt to suggest Kara leave and she took a moment to listen to his heart, realising that it had spiked with what she assumed was nervousness. 

Cat waved a hand. “Make it fast.”  
  
James stepped closer, opening his folder and pulling a photograph from it.

“I’ve been staking out the area near the docks over the last few nights. I was there last night.” He began to explain.

Kara immediately felt like she was going to throw up and barely summoned the nerves to take a tentative step closer to Cat’s side to see the picture as he placed it on her desk.  
  
And there she was, printed for the whole world to see. Her back to the camera standing off against the wolf, though it was harder to make out his form due to the slight blurring of the lens. But Kara could trace his figure, pick out the snarl of his snout, the claws against the glimmer of the streetlights.

She was just thankful that the angle James had shot it at had hidden her own claws, at most she just looked like a hooded bystander caught in the crossfire standing down against a killer. 

Oh, Alex was going to _kill_ her. 

As Cat picked up the picture, Kara forced herself to look at James only to find him staring back at her. His heart was racing, nerves? Fear? Fear of _her?_ Kara couldn’t tell.

“And what is this?” Cat asked, finally breaking the heavy silence and forcing them to both look at her.

“That is who was behind the murders.” James said. 

“He barely looks human.” Cat replied, still staring at it. “What, is he wearing some kind of costume?”

“There were agents everywhere. And they took him down moments after I took the picture. I couldn’t get closer to get a clearer picture.”

“And this person?” Cat tapped Kara’s figure.

“No idea.”

Another spike, this time Kara knew the cause of it. A lie. She held the tablet closer to her chest and willed her body not to shake.

“Why not share this with the rest of the class, James?” Cat asked.

“Figured you’d want to hold this card closer to your chest. If your focus today is the conference, this can be your springboard into the perpetrator and an exclusive nobody else has.”  
  
Cat hummed thoughtfully.

“Plus, if I’m being honest. I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at.” Another lie. “I figured the press conference might give us a clearer indication. If we published it now without any answers, the fallout might be too big.” James explained.

“You certainly brought your thinking cap today, didn’t you.” Cat almost smiled. Kara could tell she was genuinely impressed and handed the photo back over to him. 

“Very well, James, make some copies. Kiera, go with him. Take one to the research team and see if they can identify our hooded friend.” She shooed them off with a wave of her hand.  
  
Kara didn’t even respond, opting instead to follow James silently.

“James…” She began as soon as they were almost at the elevators.  
  
“I think these are yours.” He cut her off, handing her the frames of her glasses.

“I—James—”  
  
He held up a hand. She tried to search his expression for anger but found only confusion instead. 

“Last night, that wasn’t a man. What was it? What are you?”

He’d clearly seen too much, and there was no way she could lie to him. He’d already lied to Cat for her.

They stepped into the elevator and Kara didn’t dare to speak until the doors closed.

“Werewolf.” Kara choked out. The word felt bitter on her tongue.

James sagged against the wall, jaw slackening for a moment.

Kara knew that expression well. It was strikingly similar to how Winn had reacted when he found out. It was one thing to have assumptions, but an entirely different situation when the word was said, when those suspicions were confirmed.

“Shit.” 

“...Yeah.”

They didn’t speak again during the short walk back to his office. James was careful to make sure he shut the door behind Kara. Neither of them sat down, both too tense to do anything but shuffle awkwardly on their feet.

“And those agents? Government?”

Kara nodded.  
  
“Classified?”  
  
“The very definition of it.”  
  
“Do you work with them?” James asked. “Do they know about you?”  
  
“They do, but no, I don’t work with them. Technically, anyway. Someone I care about was there last night and they were in danger.”  
  
“Your sister.” James guessed.

Oh god, Alex was definitely going to kill her.

“That was why you wanted to be there last night, you wanted to be close to the action.” A startled look flashed over his face as he stared at her. “It was a full moon, an eclipse.”  
  
Kara took a step back and held her hands up. “I have total control. You were never in danger. I’ve never attacked another human.”  
  
At least not since she was a teenager, but she felt like that information wouldn’t do much to put James at ease.  
  
“Shit. Kara.” James finally sank into his chair and covered his face with his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

He dropped his hands and frowned up at her. “What for?”  
  
Kara gestured to herself vaguely. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”  
  
“You say it like it’s your fault.” He sighed. “You have to understand that this is… Overwhelming doesn’t even begin to cover it. Werewolf? Those are a thing? What else?”  
  
Kara smiled sheepishly. “Basically everything you’re probably thinking of?”  
  
“Fuck. This is… Way too heavy of a discussion to have at 9am.” 

Kara laughed, and it was a genuine one this time. “Welcome to my life.”

“You’re a werewolf.”  
  
“I’m a werewolf.” Kara nodded. “You probably have… So many questions.”

James smiled. “When my brain finishes rebooting, yeah.”

Kara finally took a seat too. “I’ll answer them. I promise. I just… Why didn’t you tell Cat?”

“As much as she wants to know the truth, do you think she’ll believe that there were two werewolves fighting by the docks last night?”  
  
Okay, valid point. But not what Kara meant.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell her about me?”  
  
“Partly for the same reason. But you concealed yourself for a reason. I imagine there would be some… Really bad consequences if you were exposed.”  
  
Kara sighed. “Remind me to explain that part to you later.”

“That photo.” James gestured to the one on his desk. “I tampered with it.”

Kara stared at it for a long moment before asking, “How?”  
  
He pulled out some more pictures and set the first one beside it so that Kara could see the differences easier. “Firstly, I darkened and blurred the wolf a bit, but more importantly…” he trailed off and pointed to Kara’s figure.

He’d cropped it.  
  
The original photo showed her claws clearly. 

When she thought it couldn’t get worse, he showed her the next photo. It was a side profile of herself and Jesus, there was no mistaking that despite how glib Cat could be about her sometimes. Even she would have been able to identify Kara in this picture.

“Alex is never going to let me out of my apartment again.” Kara declared easily.

“Am I going to get a visit from the Government?” James asked.

Kara thought back to the previous night, to the showdown with the wolf. She remembered hearing one of the agents call out about a photographer.

“They’re probably already trying to find you. It… It might be best if we go to them with this.” Kara frowned.

“I thought you might say something like that. Will they try to block us from publishing the picture? Because Kara, if that happens—”

“Cat will go after the Government for trying to stop the freedom of the press.” Kara finished, and honestly, she would expect nothing less. Cat wouldn’t let anybody intimidate her and it was one of the many qualities Kara admired about her.

“It’d be messy.” James said.

Kara let out a long groan. “I don’t get paid enough for this.” 

James reached out to give her hand a gentle pat. “Tell me about it.”  
  
“I need to call my sister, do you drink?”  
  
“Little early for that, Kara.”  
  
Kara rolled her eyes at him. “No, I mean, you have questions, I can answer them. We get drinks and takeout and I'll bring Winn, who by the way, also knows.”

“Now that gives me something to look forward to. I’ll bring a list.”  
  
Kara took a deep breath. “I’m sorry you found out the way you did, for what it’s worth, I probably would have told you myself further down the line.”  
  
“Aw, I appreciate that.”

\--

_“So, we have a problem.”_ Kara said instead of a greeting.

“Oh god. Not you too.” Alex groaned. She flashed an apologetic look at J’onn and stepped away from the crowd. She was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as they went over the final checks before the conference went live. J’onn was talking to Chief Irons and flicking through their notes.

The story was flaky at best, and they had to be ready to hit the ground running for any media coverage that was going to try and blow holes in their story. This was shaping out to be a day from hell. 

Give her a werewolf and a gun any day.

 _“Are you guys… Looking for somebody?”_ Kara asked quietly.  
  
Alex froze in her tracks. “Oh God. Kara. Don’t tell me—”  
  
_“That James was the one who took pictures of last night and that he definitely has a clear picture that would let people identify me and also has a picture that he’s already given to Cat showing me standing in front of the werewolf?”_ Kara rambled.

Alex had to pull her phone away from her ear for a moment to just stare at it dumbly. When she raised it again, Kara was back to rambling.

 _“—good news though, James cropped it so that my claws aren’t there and he blurred it enough so that you can’t actually say for certain it’s a giant werewolf? Like, I’m biased because I was there but to be honest it just looks like a very tall person with teeth. And! Cat even said it looked like a guy dressed up so maybe—”_  
  
“Kara.”  
  
Alex’s tone made Kara fall silent immediately, though even that didn’t last long.

 _“He also knows about me.”_  
  
Alex groaned again. 

_“I’m sorry?”_  
  
“It’s fine. We’ll figure it out.” Alex turned to look over at the Chief beginning to make his way to the podium. “Look, the conference is about to start. We’ll get that over with and then I'll head over to you okay? If anything, that picture might _actually_ help us if things go the way we want them to.”  
  
Kara was silent for a moment before she let out a long breath. _“Okay, I love you.”_ _  
_  
“Love you too. Send me the photo and I’ll call you back in a bit, okay?”

 _“Okay.”_  
  
Alex was rubbing her temples as she reached J’onn, he eyed her with a level of concern.

“Everything okay?” He asked.

“I got the ID of the photographer. Works for CatCo.”  
  
J’onn scowled. “Great.”  
  
“It might work in our favour.” Alex said, checking her phone to see Kara texting her the photo. “But we need to speak to the Chief.”

  
  
\--

Kara could count on one hand the things that would make the bullpen fall silent, and most of them were to do with Cat. Usually when she was making somebody cry in her office.

But the moment Chief Irons started talking, the steady chatter began to fade until finally, Kara was scared to breathe less it disrupted the scene unfurling on the screens around her.

It was short, and Kara scanned every face until she picked out a few DSO Agents that she recognised, until she saw Alex and J’onn.

Irons was nervous, not that Kara could blame him. He began his speech by thanking the officers, the ‘FBI’ agents who had stepped in to assist them in finding the murderer. He listed all of the names of the victims, reminding everyone not to forget who they were amongst all of this chaos.

Kara held her breath as he began to explain the details of last night.  
  
  


_“At around 10pm last night, the perpetrator attacked the agents on scene, seriously injuring one and attacking two others. What followed was a brief pursuit and a standoff where we tried to apprehend him. He would not comply and moved to attack once more, resulting in a brief gunfight which left the suspect deceased. At this time, we will not be releasing his name, as the investigation is still ongoing.” He took a long breath and bought himself a few moments of peace by drinking from his glass of water. “As this is an on-going investigation, we are releasing limited information. We can confirm that he bit through the throats of the victims which lead us to believe he was fulfilling a cannibalistic fantasy. The other evidence we have to support this is the nature in which we confronted him last night. He was dressed in ragged clothing and had been wearing prosthetics to give him the appearance of a monster in order to reign terror of his victims.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _The crowd began to murmur, more flashes of cameras to capture the scene._

 _“We will release more information as it becomes available to us. Our priority at this time is to make sure he was acting alone and to find out why he chose to commit these crimes in this way.” He paused to wipe his brow. “I will now open the floor to some questions.”  
_ _  
_ _  
_ Kara looked over to Winn with wide eyes as he turned to face her. They both knew this part was pointless. The Chief had given all of the information he was allowed to give, but still, it had been more than she had thought.

She suspected that the possibility of James’s photograph had forced their hand in adding in the final details.

After a mere three questions, the bullpen watched Irons make his retreat, escorted by his colleagues and the screen switched to one of their reporters who was now giving a play by play recap of what had just happened.

“Did he basically say the guy was wearing a wolf suit?” Winn asked.

“...Definitely sounded that way.” Kara whispered. 

“Oh my god, because of James, they made the guy into a furry.” Winn hissed. “Oh my god that would be really funny if you know… Loads of people hadn’t died and you got yourself mauled.”  
  
Kara groaned into her hands. “It could have gone worse, I guess.”  
  
“It’s the best they could do.” Winn shrugged.

The noise had begun to pick up once more as people started to discuss what they had seen. Kara didn’t want to hear any of it though, and found her senses drifting over to Cat’s heartbeat, letting it’s steady rhythm ground her.  
  
Alex would be over soon, so at least she had that. 

“What the hell is a furry!?” Cat’s voice broke through everything.

Kara’s eyes darted up to see Cat leaving her office and coming to a stop only a few inches from her desk, looking out at the bullpen.

The bullpen fell into a shattering silence once more, and Kara could sense the mutual horror from everybody around her.

“Well?” Cat demanded.

“Furries? People who—you know what never mind, I can't be the person who introduces Cat Grant to the concept of furries.” Winn trailed off with a whisper and almost yelped at the withering glare that was thrown his way. 

Kara shrank down in her seat as the silence stretched on. Clearly, nobody wanted to be _that_ person who admitted they knew what a furry was. 

“Kiera?” Cat turned to stare her down.

Oh god.  
  
For a moment, Kara wished that the werewolf had killed her last night. Or that the floor would open up beneath her.

And well, Kara had never been one to deny Cat anything so that, combined with the need for this moment to be over and to metaphorically take one for the team, Kara spoke up.

“They um. They’re people who dress up as animals but like… with human behaviour? It’s a whole subculture.” She cleared her throat and willed herself to not let her tone get even higher. “It’s a big thing.”  
  
Kara didn’t deserve this. She was a good person. 

Cat just glared, though Kara could tell it was more out of frustration than being directly aimed at her.

“Twitter has blown up, declaring the killer as having a serial killer fursona. I don’t like this. We need to change the narrative.” She clicked her fingers as she spun on her heel. “Kiera, come.”  
  
And okay, that kind of an order? Not. Helping. 

Was she bright red? She felt like she was bright red. 

“Have fun?” Winn said, giving Kara a curious look.

Kara glared at him before grabbing her tablet and following after Cat.

“I need you to get Snapper on this. We need to give the killer a better name. If this _Furry_ thing,”—She practically spat out the word and Kara had to hide a grin behind her hand—“takes hold then it’ll turn National City into a laughing stock. It’ll do a disservice to all of the lives that he took. I want James’s picture on the front page. The Wolf-Man of National City.”  
  
“The.. Wolf-Man?” Kara asked.

“Yes Kiera, keep up. Watch a true crime documentary for once in your life. I can name three serial killers off the top of my head that had werewolf related monicers.”  
  
“Wolf-Man.” Kara nodded and wrote it down. “Got it.”

“Have our team reach out to the families of the victims. I want a four page spread of them all. The Chief was right about one thing. They deserve to be remembered. I want this story done triple time and on my desk by four for review to be posted to our site tonight and for it to be in the paper tomorrow.”  
  
Kara continued to nod, planning out her route of action. Heading down the researchers would definitely be her first stop.  
  
“I’m on it, Miss Grant.” Kara turned to leave.

“And Keira?”  
  
“Yes, Miss Grant?” she looked over her shoulder as Cat settled back into her desk.  
  
“Thank you, for explaining out there.” Cat said, and then with a huff added. “Honestly, you can’t even get a straight answer around here.” 

Kara frowned and if she didn’t know better, she’d say Cat was embarrassed.

Now that was new, not that she’d say that out loud. Cat would probably kill her where she stood.

“Of course Miss Grant.”

\--

As the doors to the elevator opened and Alex prepared herself to step out, she faltered as she came face to face with Kara, who let out a startled yelp and dropped her tablet, only barely managing to catch it before it hit the ground.

“Alex! Wow hey, you really came straight from the conference?”  
  
“Did I scare you?” Alex asked. “How? You always hear me coming.” she stepped to the side to let Kara in.

Kara pushed a button and relaxed against the wall of the elevator as they began their descent.  
  
“I wasn’t listening.” She explained with a shrug. “Busy day.”  
  
“Yeah I’ll bet. Have you checked twitter?”  
  
Kara scowled. “No.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Alex.” There was a little rumble to her voice, not quite a growl but Alex could tell Kara was doing her best to be intimidating. If anything, it just made her cuter.  
  
“It’s okay Kara, you can tell me if you’re a furry.”  
  
“I will throw you through a window.”  
  
Alex grinned and poked Kara in the ribs until she laughed and tried to shuffle away. 

“You guys are the ones who decided to say he was dressed as a wolf!!!” Kara protested through her laughter and finally swatted Alex’s hands away. “Cat’s sending me on a mission to get a story done in triple time. She’s using the picture.” She added with a pout

“Which is why I’m here.” Alex held up a folder. “I need to see James.”  
  
Alex had an entire section of a filing cabinet dedicated to NDA’s in regards to Kara’s identity, just in case. She really hoped that they wouldn’t see the light of day.  
  
“You’re not mad about the picture?”  
  
“Kara, it’s not like you took the picture yourself. J’onn and I agreed that it’ll help our story stick if anything.”

Kara didn’t look convinced, but she also looked way too tired to actually care. 

They reached the floor that Kara needed to go to and stepped out. Alex hadn’t actually seen most of CatCo, she only ever really went to Kara’s office so she let Kara take the lead.  
  
“How did James take it?” Alex asked.

“He’s scared of me, I think.” Kara frowned. “Not that I blame him. But he also isn’t running for the hills yet, so that has to be a good sign. I suggested having drinks soon so I could answer his questions, I'll bring Winn as a buffer.”  
  
“He’ll just need time, Kara. It’s a lot to take in even without seeing what he did last night.”  
  
“I know.” Kara hesitated before she gestured to some offices in front of her. “I’ll be five minutes, then I'll take you to him, deal?”  
  
“Have you had your lunch yet?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Well, when you’ve taken me to him, do what you have to do and then we’ll go to Noonans.”  
  
Kara brightened up considerably at her words and Alex noticed a definite spring to her step as she walked away. 

\--

James looked up at the knock on his door, Kara stood awkwardly in the doorway with another woman dressed entirely in black positioned just behind her. 

“Kara, what’s up?”  
  
Kara gestured to the woman. “My sister, Alex. She, uh, needs to talk to you.”  
  
James had wondered how long it would take for her to show up. He closed his laptop and waved Alex in.  
  
“Yeah, of course.”  
  
Kara turned to Alex and the two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before Kara nodded and moved out of the way, saying something to Alex quietly under her breath causing Alex to smirk almost imperceptibly. 

“I admit, I didn’t expect you to show up this fast.” James said.

“Yeah well, can’t waste time on these kinds of things.” Alex dropped a file on his desk before sitting down and making herself comfortable in his office. “Read through them carefully and sign where it’s marked. Any questions, ask. Then we’ll talk.”

“Do I want to know what happens if I don’t sign?” James asked.

“Nope.” 

Alex wore intimidation very well. He’d take on Cat Grant any day, at least she wasn’t familiar with an arsenal of weapons. 

Fifteen minutes and a lot of signatures later, James dropped his pen to his desk and pushed the paperwork back over to Alex.

“Couldn’t help but notice a lot of that was about keeping Kara’s identity secret more than your organisation.” James said.

“As far as the rest of the world is concerned, we don’t exist. Kara doesn’t have that same luxury. She has a life and she deserves to live it. So yes. I’m here for Kara’s protection.”  
  
James studied her for a few moments and didn’t doubt Alex’s words at all. It was clear in every word that she spoke how far she would be willing to go for Kara.  
  
“Questions?” Alex asked.

“A few.”  
  
“Fire away.”  
  
“Did you know from the start about her?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
James narrowed his eyes. “Were you scared of her?”  
  
“Yes. Next?”  
  
“I’m really not going to get much out of you here, am i?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
James sighed. “Listen. I want to be here for her, but last night? That was fucking terrifying. How am I supposed to act naturally when I know this?”  
  
For the first time since they met, Alex’s expression seemed to soften briefly. 

“It takes time.” Alex answered eventually. “It’s harder for you because even though you’ve known of her for a while because of her cousin, you still don’t know her that well. And now suddenly everything you thought you knew about her has changed because of this. I’m not the person to talk to about that, I knew she was a werewolf from day one and I was scared because we were kids.” She explained.

“Kara said that Winn knew.”  
  
“He does.” Alex nodded. “But my advice? Take your time. She isn’t asking anything of you beyond keeping her secret. She may be a werewolf but she isn’t a threat, not like the one from last night.”

She gathered the paperwork and rose to her feet. 

“I think I’m more afraid of what else is out there.” James admitted quietly.

Alex paused by the door and sighed.

“I can’t help you with that, but yeah. You should be.”  
  
He was fairly sure he could hear the fear in her voice, but Alex was gone before he could ask her.   
  


* * *

As Kara unlocked her apartment door, she was greeted with a duffel bag to the face, not enough to throw her off balance, but definitely did the trick in scaring the life out of her.

“Alex, what the heck?”  
  
Alex raised an eyebrow as she grinned. “Heck? Really?”  
  
Kara grumbled and shuffled back into her apartment, knowing that Alex would follow her. 

“It’s a change of clothes, you’re coming to the DSO.”  
  
Kara spun around. “Why?”  
  
Alex looked excited, so clearly nothing bad is happening. “Because I’m going to teach you how to fight.”  
  
“I’m sorry, what?”

“Don’t get me wrong, we still don’t know what to do with you. But at the very least, I should be making sure you can handle yourself in a fight.”  
  
“I can handle myself fine!” Kara threw the bag onto her sofa.  
  
“Tackles and throwing things can only get you so far.” Alex strode over to pick up the bag and shoved it back into kara’s arms. “You need to learn proper self defense.”  
  
“You just want an excuse to try and beat me up.” Kara pouted.

“That too.” Alex agreed. “I was going to drag you out yesterday, but after the week you’ve had, I figured I'd at least give you Saturday to relax.”  
  
“How kind of you.” Kara drawled. 

Alex rolled up her sleeve and made a show of checking her watch. “I’m going to give you four minutes to do whatever your need to and get out of this apartment or I _will_ spoil How to Get Away with Murder.”  
  
Kara whined. “You promised not to watch ahead!”  
  
“Three minutes, thirty seconds.”

\--

“Kara. Get up.”  
  
Despite the fact that Kara was lying face down in the middle of the room, Alex knew she was pouting.

“No.”  
  
Alex stared at her sister. “We’re not done yet.”  
  
Kara turned her head to the side to glare up at her. “You’re just enjoying beating me up.”  
  
And okay, a little bit. It was definitely an ego boost to spar with a werewolf and drop her on her ass repeatedly, even if that werewolf was her pouting little sister. 

Alex walked around so that she could crouch in front of her Kara, who for her part, returned to facing the ground. “It’ll take time, but you’ll get better. You have a lot of abilities to your advantage. If you can learn how to fight like me then that’ll just make you stronger in the future.”  
  
Kara grumbled, though Alex couldn’t pick out the words.

“You’re being a lot more stubborn than usual.” Alex noted with some amusement. “You know, you should take this attitude to work. Maybe then Cat would actually treat you with some respect.”  
  
Kara’s head snapped up, brows furrowing. “Cat respects me.”

Alex rocked on her heels and laughed at the petulant look on Kara’s face. “She has you running around like a lapdog all day, Kara.”  
  
Before she could finish saying Kara’s name, the other girl pounced. Moving from a completely prone position faster than Alex thought she was capable of, barreling into Alex and throwing her completely off balance and sending them to the ground.  
  
Alex was still too stunned to move even as Kara pinned Alex face down to the ground, knee pressed into her back just like she had been taught. 

“What was that about never letting your guard down?” Kara asked.

Alex grumbled and reached back to pat Kara’s leg, signalling for her to move, which she did immediately.  
  
“Playing dead isn’t going to work for your enemies, Kara.” Alex replied, a bit more petulance than she would like slipping into her tone as she dusted herself off and stood up to face Kara.  
  
“I know.” Kara agreed. “I only needed it to work for you.” She added with a shit eating grin.

Oh, Alex was going to get her back for that. 

“You little shit.”  
  
Kara didn’t flinch, still looking very amused at herself.

“So what I’m hearing here is that if I want you to fight properly, I have to make dog puns. Duly noted.”  
  
Instead of the glare she was expecting, Kara’s features softened into a barely there frown as she stepped back and slipped her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants.  
  
“That was a good move though. Sneaky, but good.” Alex admitted after a moment. “You just need to stop holding back.”  
  
This time Kara’s frown was fully formed. “I could break your bones like a matchstick if I’m not careful.”  
  
She tried to say it casually, but Alex could hear the anguish in her voice. It was easy to forget sometimes, just how strong she could be and Kara was right, as much as Alex trusted her, Kara had never fully learned to trust herself.  
  
It definitely explained why she didn’t meet much resistance during their session today. This was an entirely new situation for Kara and she was barely dipping her toes into the water on the off chance she lost her focus and hurt Alex. Play fighting was one thing, but this was something else entirely. 

“Well, we’ll just have to figure something out before we try this again.” Alex decided after a moment.

Kara cocked her head to the side and studied Alex for a moment, and honestly, it took a lot of restraint to not make a confused puppy pun. 

"This isn't going to be like the time you tried to make wolfsbane infused vodka is it?" Kara asked. 

They both winced. Alex had to admit that while her reasoning was relatively sound, she did end up poisoning kara. 

God, she was grounded for so long Alex thought she'd never see the light of day again. 

"This time there's a whole team of scientists so it'll definitely not almost kill you." Alex promised. 

Kara seemed to accept this with ease and nodded. 

"Do you want to raid the break room? There might be donuts." Alex asked because Kara was either tired or definitely troubled by something at the moment and Alex was still trying to figure out which one that was. 

Kara nodded and fell into step with Alex as they made their way towards the control room of the DSO. 

And okay. She was a serious and well respected government agent, but when her sister was being grumpy, all bets were off. 

And plus, Alex still kind of wanted revenge for the cheap shot earlier. 

So as far as she was concerned, nobody could judge her for jumping on Kara’s back. 

\--

"Alex!" Kara yelped. "Why are you such a spidermonkey!!" 

"Never let your guard down!" Alex yelled back and Jesus, was she glued to Kara’s back? 

Kara stumbled through the corridor trying to detach her sister without accidentally hurting her when her hearing picked up a new, unfamiliar voice. 

_"Director, you understand that your organisation is under a lot of scrutiny right now."_

"Alex." 

_"Of course, General. And while I understand that, know that we will cooperate fully with your investigation." J'onn replied._

"Alex wait, stop, there's someone—" 

"You're not getting out of this that easily Kara." Alex cut her off and grappled her into a headlock for good measure. 

_"And I'm sure that you will find our operation in fine working order."_

In Kara's defence, there were too many things going on at once. And while the obvious response to the situation would have been to just stop walking, her motor functions had clearly decided to continue on autopilot. 

Which was why, as J'onn finished talking, Kara stumbled into the control room, Alex still clinging to her with her arm around Kara's neck. 

There were a few soldiers dotted around but Kara's focus was on the two figures stood by J'onn, staring at her. 

Based on the uniforms, the older man was definitely the General, though the woman stood to his side also seemed very important. 

She didn't like the way the General was staring at her though. She knew Alex could feel every part of her body tensing under the scrutiny. 

"If by working order you mean a frat house. Then yes, clearly." the General replied dryly. 

Alex was graceful as she settled back to the ground and the shift in her body language as she went from sister to skilled agent was fascinating for Kara to watch. 

"Agent Danvers." J'onn acknowledged, despite the heavy sigh he was holding back. "This is General Sam Lane and Major Lucy Lane." 

Alex held her hand out and shook his hand stiffly before doing the same with the Major. 

"They're here to... Observe our operation in light of the rogue wolf incident." 

"Understood. If there's anything I can do to assist you, please let me know." Alex said, tone carefully neutral. 

The General's gaze drifted back over to Kara. "And you?" 

Kara opened her mouth to reply before snapping it shut and looking over to Alex. 

"That's Kara." Alex replied and Kara could see her body tense up, a hint of that big sister protectiveness slipping in. 

"She's not an agent?" 

"She's an asset." J'onn replied. 

Kara could practically sense the distaste in the General. 

"And what kind of an asset would she be?" 

His true words were loud and clear for everybody to hear. 

_What is she?_

"Kara was responsible for saving the lives of my agents and facing down the rogue." J'onn explained. 

"Oh so _you're_ the one all the media is trying to identify." The General said, giving another once over. He turned back to J'onn. "And you just let her wonder about freely?" 

"She isn't a prisoner," Alex snapped before catching herself and adding "Sir." at the end. 

Kara wanted nothing more than to go back to bed, or for it to be Monday so she can just be back at CatCo. 

"What Agent Danvers meant to say was, Kara is here of her own free will, much like myself, her knowledge and abilities are of great use to us." 

There was a restless kind of energy coming from the general. Kara could tell that he was thinking of more to say, that he wanted to say more and okay, safe to say this guy was not fond of werewolves. 

"Would it be possible to look over all of the reports from the case?" Major Lane asked and Kara was beyond thankful for the gentle shift in topic. "I'll need to familiarise myself before I start speaking to your agents." 

“And I would like to see the state of your holding cells.” The General added.

“Of course, Agent Danvers, would you take the Major to my office, General Lane—if you’d follow me.”

Alex flashed Kara a quick look as she escorted the Major out and Kara quietly resigned herself to knowing she wouldn’t be leaving the building any time soon. She’d have to try and find somewhere quiet to hide until she knew she could go back to the comfort of her apartment.

She wished she had a sketchbook.

\--

J’onn didn’t like Sam Lane. 

He respected his rank, but even that was a stretch. The man wore his hatred of all things supernatural on his chest with the same amount of pride that he did his medals.

J’onn could at least say that he could keep his dislike of the man in check. The same could not be said for Alex. 

The moment Lane’s attention had shifted to Kara in the control room, he had seen the way Alex’s demeanour had changed, she had been ready to jump in and defend her sister had he said anything that could have been even vaguely interpreted as a threat. 

Which was why he had made sure to send her off on some errands that would hopefully keep her and Sam from crossing paths anytime soon. He just hoped that she would choose to go and look for Kara instead of seeking them out. 

“What kind of prisoners do you hold here?” Sam asked when they finally reached the holding cells.  
  
J’onn scanned them through and allowed Sam to step through first. “At the moment, there aren’t many. The majority of our encounters end with us being unable to apprehend the creatures so they often end with them being killed. We currently have three vampires, a wendigo and a shapeshifter in our custody.”

“That’s all?”  
  
“Like I said sir, by the time we get involved, it’s because the creature has killed people or has no control of their abilities. They’d rather fight to death, which is how it usually ends.”  
  
“And the cells are secure?”  
  
“Many share the same weakness.” J’onn said. “The majority of cells are lined with pure silver, though you’ll notice that there are specific differences depending on the creature. The vampires, for example, have branches of juniper to line the floor.” “And they can’t escape?”  
  
“They haven’t yet, sir.”  
  
“And what about the werewolf?” Sam asked. “How would you contain one of those beyond silver?”  
  
“Wolfsbane.” J’onn replied and left it at that. 

“And what of weapons?”

“What about them?”  
  
“Are you developing more?”  
  
J’onn tried not to frown, though he knew he wasn’t entirely successful. “We have all the weapons we need here. Standard ammunition is enough to bring down many creatures, and whenever our agents are sent into the field their sidearm is loaded with silver bullets should it come to it.”  
  
A flash of anger crossed Sam’s face and unlike J’onn, he made no attempt to hide it. 

“You mean to tell me you have a werewolf willingly roaming this building and you’re not using it to develop ways to bring its kind to its knees?”  
  
J’onn was thankful Alex wasn’t there to hear the man speak, he wasn’t sure Sam would leave the building alive if she had heard his words. 

“She is not an experiment to be tested on.” J’onn replied as evenly as he could.

“You said that the wolf was an asset, Director. But from where I stand I still don’t understand how. You say it isn’t a field agent and now you’re saying you won’t even test on it. What purpose does it serve?” 

“Kara is in training. She went into the field last week before she was ready to protect the lives of my agents. When she is ready then she will be an active part of our team. For now she is simply a consultant into the mindset of a werewolf.” 

It wasn’t a lie exactly. Honestly, J’onn was as at much of a loss as Alex was as to what to do with Kara. There was no denying how useful she would be if she were part of the DSO, even if it was only part time. But at the same time it was exactly because of people like Sam Lane that made him wish she could just stay under the radar.

He just hoped that they were far enough away from Kara that she wasn’t listening to them right now. 

“You have a weapon running free in your building, Director. Either use it or neutralise it.” Sam warned.

J’onn counted in his head slowly, willing himself not to show the level of his anger. When he had first revealed himself to the DSO, he had undergone a similar period of mistreatment. His own abilities limited him to undercover work and how to best utilise the ability to change form and while he had greater strength than a human, the threat he posed was nothing compared to what Kara could do.

“Noted, General.” J’onn replied. “Is there anything else you want to see?”  
  
“No, have someone escort me out.”  
  
“Of course, sir.”  
  
J’onn waved over one of his agents and fired off his instructions, not daring to let out a breath until Sam was firmly out of his sight.

For Kara’s own safety, he needed to make sure they got through this investigation in one piece. He didn’t dare imagine what would happen to her if the keys to the DSO were handed to Sam Lane.

  
  


\--

Lucy was a decorated soldier and a highly respected lawyer. She had spent years proving herself to her peers and rising above them all and took comfort knowing that everything she had achieved, she had done so without relying on her name and father's rank.

But for fucks sake. She hated the monotony of reading through reports. Even when the reports she was reading, for the lack of a better term, were this cool.

She flipped through the names for each report, noticing that there appeared to be one in specific missing. She opted to save Agent Danvers report until last as hers seemed to be the largest considering she had had the most contact with the werewolf that night.

There were still twelve reports to read though, Lucy sighed and took her hat off. It was going to be a long day.

“Ma’am?” A voice from the doorway caught her attention and Lucy looked up to see Agent Vasquez, with a nod of permission, she walked in and placed another stack of files on the desk. “The Director thought you might want these too.”  
  
Lucy’s expression must not have been impressed, because Vasquez’s lips quirked up into a brief smile.

“Is there a place here where I can get a cup of coffee?” Lucy asked. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some to get through this.”  
  
This time Vasquez did smile, her posture relaxing at Lucy’s tone.

“Did the Director forget to give you a tour of the facilities?”

“He most likely, and correctly assumed, that my father would not be impressed.” Lucy replied. 

“I’ll take you there now, if you want. Looks like you might be here for a while.”  
  
It was only a short walk and it was only a couple of minutes before Vasquez was leading her towards a side room.

“Now, it’s no Starbucks, but help yourself. There’s usually donuts too.” Vasquez explained.

“Thank you Agent Vasquez.”  
  
Vasquez nodded and made her way back down the hallway to resume her duties. Lucy stepped into the break room, only to fall short when she realised she wasn’t the only person in there.

The werewolf.

She was sat cross legged on one of the chairs next to a table, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of her hoody.

Lucy knew the basics of werewolf physiology and knew there was no way that she hadn’t heard her approach, so she must be intentionally trying to ignore her. 

Lucy debated for a few moments on whether to acknowledge her or not. Nobody in the building seemed to be thrilled at her or her father's arrival, and while it was clear that Agent Danvers and J'onn carried some hostility in their bodies, the wolf just seemed a bit lost, confused and entirely out of place. 

She might not be a werewolf, but Lucy could sure as shit relate to that feeling. 

"Trying to hide?" Lucy asked. 

Kara looked up, surprised to be acknowledged before dropping her head and shrugging. 

"There isn't really anywhere to hide here." Kara replied. "I'm just in the way anywhere else." 

Lucy held up the coffee pot in offer to Kara as she considered her next words, Kara shook her head and Lucy poured herself a cup. 

"What do you do around here usually?" 

"I don't… This is probably the longest I've ever been in here." Kara sighed. 

This time it was Lucy's turn to frown, though she hid it behind her mug. J'onn had said that she was an asset, but now Lucy had more questions about the extent of her place within the DSO. 

She made a note to look into that a bit more later. 

"So… There was something I wanted to ask." 

Kara looked at her apprehensively, drawing her arms around her knees a little tighter. "Yeah?" 

"I'm going over the reports from that night, I noticed that yours wasn't there." 

She could tell that it wasn't what Kara was expecting to be asked. Lucy belatedly realised that Kara probably expected to be asked about being a wolf. 

And okay, Lucy wanted to know all of that stuff too, but maybe not when Kara was clearly pretty unsure about Lucy. 

"I was never asked to write one." Kara replied. 

"Really? I have one from every other agent there." 

"I'm not an agent." Kara replied, her voice tight. "You heard J'onn. I'm an asset. I helped. That was all." 

And okay, that raised more questions but none that she felt Kara could answer. As soon as her father was out of sight, she would have to get some time with J'onn. 

"Could you write one for me?" Lucy asked.

"You want me to write a report?"

"You were there, your perspective on it all could be valuable." 

Kara looked thoughtful for a few moments, biting at her lip as she studied Lucy. 

"Can I ask you something?" Kara said instead. 

"It's only fair." 

"What are you guys doing here?" Kara asked. "Like, what are the outcomes?" 

Lucy was impressed, in the few hours she'd been here, nobody had actually asked her that. 

"Long story short? The guys up top think that the situation was handled badly, they believe that it took too long and too many civilians were killed before the rogue wolf was stopped. So I'm here to see how the investigation progressed, if good decisions outweighed the bad. How the fallout is being handled in terms of the public finding out about the existence of the supernatural."

Kara nodded as Lucy explained. "And the outcomes?" 

"That wouldn't be my decision, at most I'll be giving my thoughts and recommendations. But worst case scenario? Overhaul of the DSO. New staff et cetera, et cetera." 

Kara seemed to curl into herself a bit more. "Are you supposed to tell me that?" 

"Probably not." Lucy smiled. 

There was a question in Kara's eyes. A heavy _Why?_ In the silence between them. If she had asked, Lucy wouldn't have been sure what her answer would have been. 

Lucy didn't want to push anymore, besides, she still had a lot of work to do today, so with that she rose to her feet. 

"If you get bored of hiding in here, I've been set up in J'onn's office today so feel free to drop by." 

Kara nodded, still looking a little confused. "I'll get the report to you as soon as I can."   
  
  


\--

As soon as Lucy was gone, Kara sagged into her seat. 

It was confusing. When Lucy had started talking to her, Kara had dragged her focus away from J’onn and the retreating General Lane to focus on her. To listen to every beat of her heart for any signs of fear, of lying or hatred like her father clearly exuded and found none of it. 

While her father had been talking of using her for experiments, it had felt like Lucy was offering her a kind of olive branch.

She wanted to talk to Alex about it, but Kara wasn’t certain she could do so here. What if, worst case scenario, the General had bugged the place? 

Kara just wanted to go home and sleep. If nothing else, she’d get Alex to meet her there when she had a chance because there was clearly a lot they needed to talk about.

She was actually excited to go to work tomorrow just to forget about all of this for a few hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: This is a relatively serious fic  
> Also me: whaT IF FURRY?
> 
> At the moment, i'm planning on keeping a "post by Friday latest" schedule, just while I try to find a balance with work and everything so we'll see how it goes.


	3. Why do all of the monsters come out at night?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drama on the horizon at CatCo. Friendships are formed and a new threat comes out of the shadows. 
> 
> So, business as usual really

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Monsters" by All Time Low ft Blackbear

“Director, are you sure you don’t want your office back?” Lucy asked. 

She’d been there for over an hour already, slipping out of the hotel early to avoid a tense breakfast with her father.

“It’s J’onn, Major Lane, I insist. And it’s fine, I’ll be spending most of the day in the control room anyways.” J’onn replied.

“In that case, you should probably call me Lucy.” Lucy replied with a smile. “But if you have a few minutes to spare, I would like to speak with you about something.”   
  
“Of course, what can I help you with?” He asked as he moved to sit down.

“It’s about Kara.”   
  
And there it was, the briefest hesitation that settled on his face as he took a seat. She hadn’t spoken to many DSO agents yet, but whenever Kara was mentioned, it was like a bucket of ice water had been tipped over them.

It wasn’t even entirely from fear, it was like a genuine confusion about her place within their organisation as they dodged her questions. Vasquez in particular spoke of Kara fondly but refused to give much information about her.

But Lucy was damn good at her job. She could get answers even when people couldn’t. She would get to the bottom of this.

“Is this for your report?”   
  
Lucy grinned and made a show of putting her pen down. “It’s more for my own curiosity.” She answered honestly.

“What do you want to know?”   
  
“Well, before we get to that. I want to lay all my cards on the table.” Lucy said. “Going through all of your files and the ones Vasquez got for me, I noticed that Kara has no information about her on record beyond her first name. Based on introductions yesterday it was hard not to notice that she seemed closer to Agent Danvers than everybody else here. I went through Agent Danvers’ files and did some digging. I know Kara is her sister.”

J’onn nodded but said nothing, a picture of patience as he waited for Lucy to continue. 

“So am I right to say that she was involved with the fight because Alex was in danger because of the lunar eclipse?”   
  
“You are.”   
  
“And that the reason she isn’t an Agent is because she lives a normal life?”   
  
She didn’t actually need him to confirm that she already knew where Kara worked, that Cat Grant (Cat freaking Grant!) was her boss and that ultimately, she seemed the perfectly average—if a little awkward—human being. 

“That’s right.” J’onn agreed. “What is your question?”   
  
“I just want to know why. Why the hesitation in making her an official part of the DSO?”   


“Originally, it was to give her that chance to have a normal life. To stay under the radar free from hunters and the pressure of this life.”   
  
“But now?”   
  
J’onn hesitated, drumming his fingers on his knee as he thought about his answer. “I have a question for you first. I know why you’re here, you’re conducting the investigation—but why is your father here?”   
  
Lucy was thrown a little by his words. “I’m a part of his team. I’m his legal council.”   
  
“But does  _ he _ need to be here?”   
  
Lucy frowned at him. “I suppose not, but the General runs a tight ship. It makes sense he would want to oversee this.”   
  
J’onn folded his arms over his chest. “Forgive me if I overstep with this, but I had an enlightening conversation with him yesterday, during which he expressed a desire that we should be using Kara as either a soldier or as something to test experimental weapons on.”   
  
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. She knew her father had very… black and white views when it came to life, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to assume that when faced with someone that has the potential to be as dangerous as Kara, he’d want to know how to make use of her.   
  
But still, it wasn’t a pleasant thought to know he had voiced those thoughts. It was even more concerning that if those were his intentions, that he hadn’t voiced them to her at all prior to arriving at the DSO.

“My concern now, is that if I bring Kara in, your father will request for her to be transferred to his unit as a weapon...” 

Or worse. J’onn didn’t need to finish his thought and as much as Lucy loathed to think about it, she couldn’t argue with that logic. 

But with it brought a darker train of thought, one she didn’t want to voice without more evidence.

Without the DSO at her back, officially, what was stopping her father from just taking Kara into custody? She’d disappear into one of their bunkers.

Lucy made a note to start trying to press him for information, father or not. Lucy knew she had a responsibility to investigate the DSO without bias and to protect everybody, werewolf or not. 

“Thank you, J’onn.” Lucy said, picking up her pen once more, signalling the end of their conversation. “I’ll let you know if I have any questions regarding the investigation.”   
  
They shared a long look and Lucy could tell he was trying to read her, to see if he could trust her when he clearly couldn’t trust her father. 

“For the record, Major, you’re damn good at your job.” J’onn said as he left.

Lucy chuckled as she reached for the next set of files. “I know.”

  
  


\--

“Ms. Grant?” Kara walked into her office without pause, her attention focused solely on her tablet. “Did you listen to Leslie’s show this morning?”

Like most things under her empire, Cat tried to be present and aware of as much of it as possible and that was especially true with Leslie Willis as she had personally discovered her.

But she was a busy woman and sometimes, there had to be sacrifices.

“No Kiera, I didn’t.” Cat put her pen down but didn’t remove her glasses. “Do you have a point to this interruption or can one of us get back to work?”   
  
Kara seemed to sidestep the jab, something Cat noticed she had been doing more and more recently and held the tablet out to her.

“Twitter is blowing up after today's episode. She made some… Points, about the wolf-man.” Kara said, nose scrunching in the smallest way as she used the killer's nickname.

“Of course she did.” Cat replied with a small hint of pride. She had mentored her after all, a bit of controversy was always good to bring in the numbers.

She caught a glimpse of Kara flinching, a small grimace on her features but ignored it in favor of scanning through the mentions on twitter. One of the many perks of having an assistant as well as a whole team to monitor her social media meant that she didn't have to bother handling the day to day trends. 

As she read through the first few tweets, she finally began to grasp the urgency in Kara's body language as she stood in front of her. 

"Am I to understand that Leslie is encouraging a conspiracy theory in which the killer was actually a werewolf and this is all one big cover up?" Cat asked. 

"That about sums it up, yes." Kara replied. "She only really started talking about it towards the end though." 

"If it gets the public listening, then for now there's no harm if she's indulging a bit of what people might be thinking." Cat handed the tablet back. 

Kara hesitated for a moment and Cat could see her brow furrow with questions and was almost surprised when, instead of voicing them, Kara turned to return to her desk. 

With each day that passed, Kara seemed to become more of a question to her, and Cat often found herself wondering when exactly did she start spending so much time trying to read and understand her assistant. 

Cat shoved the thoughts aside and grabbed her pen. It was easier to run an empire than consider her feelings towards Kara. 

\--

“So Agent Danvers, in your own words could you explain what you think went well regarding your investigation?”   
  
Alex stared at Lucy for a long few moments. 

“It’s all in my report.”   
  
“I just want your opinion, that doesn’t often translate through a written report.” Lucy explained. If she picked up on any of Alex’s hostility then she wasn’t showing it. 

Alex forced herself to relax in her seat, to put out the vibe of not giving a fuck. If it weren’t J’onn’s desk, she’d have kicked her legs onto it.

“We stopped the rogue werewolf and we’ve managed to get the media under control. The mission was a success, there’s not much opinion about that.”

Lucy appeared to write something down and twirled her pen between her fingers as she regarded Alex. “And what do you feel went wrong?”   
  
“I think we did fine under the circumstances.”   
  
“You do realise that I’m trying to help you, right, Danvers?” Lucy asked. 

“More like either get us shut down or transferred over to daddy’s control.” Alex muttered. 

The twitch in Lucy’s lips was more out of amusement than anger, Alex noted. She still hadn’t stopped twirling that damn pen.

“I can’t speak for my father's intentions, he’s never exactly been privy to sharing information so believe me when I say I get your.. Ah.. apprehension? With trusting me. If I were in your position I probably wouldn’t trust me either.” Lucy leant back in her seat and threw her legs onto the desk, crossing her ankles lazily. 

Either Lucy truly was relaxed, or she was playing a game, giving Alex the illusion of being at ease, trying to get Alex to lower her guard, to trust.

Well, it wasn’t going to be that easy, Major Lane.   
  
“Well ma’am, why does it matter so much that I give you my opinion on what went wrong?” Alex asked.

Lucy’s nose wrinkled. “Ever wonder why the term ‘Ma’am’ makes people sound like they’re forty? But okay, I'll level. Sure, Marsdin is a Democrat but Congress sure isn’t. And there are more people than my father interested in your clandestine organization. I need to know what actually goes on here, what your opinions are, basically everything that I can’t get from classified files.”   
  
Alex narrowed her eyes. “Playing politics is a waste of time when there are lives at stake, Major. Besides, there’s nothing to tell. Everything’s in the reports and every few years we endure General Lane’s interest. It’s all textbook procedure.”   
  
Lucy levelled her with a serious gaze. “My father’s interest can get you more funding but he can’t guarantee Kara’s safety—even the safety of any other...assets...that you care for. Myself, on the other hand...I would appreciate the transparency, is all, since I  _ am _ conducting the investigation this time around.” 

Alex considered her with a curious gaze. Lucy stopped twirling the pen and put it back to her paper. 

“So, Agent Danvers. Where do you feel the investigation went wrong?”   
  
Lucy was impossible to read, if Alex weren’t certain that Lucy was working against her then she would be impressed by it. 

“Would you feel better if I asked you how you think the DSO could improve instead?” Lucy asked.

Kara came to mind. 

She had wondered what would have happened if she had let Kara in on the investigation earlier. Would she have been able to track the scent? Could she have tracked him to the sewer system and stopped it all before they’d reached the eclipse?    
  
If she had, not only would there have been lives saved, that photo James took never would have been taken. So much could have been avoided. 

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Alex said. 

DSO or not, she wasn't about to tell some military bigwig that she felt like her sister was the best way to help them.

Lucy looked almost disappointed. 

“Of course, I’ll be here all week.” There was a teasing tone in her words that didn’t really hit the mark.

\--

“Hey buddy, you got a minute?” James stopped at the edge of Winn’s desk.

Winn was pretty sure that for a moment, he forgot how to make words work.

“Yes. Yep. Hi, all of the minutes. I have… All of the minutes.” He cleared his throat and pretended not to notice James’s raised eyebrow. “What’s up?”   
  
“It’s about Kara.”   
  
“Oh well,” Winn looked towards the empty desk. “She’s gone to pick up some stuff for Cat but she should be back soon?” 

“No no, I mean, I want to talk about Kara.” James grabbed Kara’s chair and dragged it closer. “About you know what.”   
  
Ohhhhh. Right. That.

“Sure. What’s on your mind?” Winn asked.

“Were you freaked out, when you found out?” He reached for the rubik's cube on Winn’s desk and began to play with it, twisting it aimlessly.

“Kinda? It was different for me though. I didn’t find out the way you did. It was actually more like a major miscommunication that led to her telling me. You found out by quite literally seeing her fighting a massive feral werewolf.”

“So she doesn’t scare you?”   
  
“Nah, are you scared of her?”   


James hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe? A little.”   
  
“It’ll get easier. You just gotta remember that she’s still Kara. Sunshine personified, lover of all things takeout. She just also happens to have cool glowing eyes and claws sometimes.”

“Thanks dude. I appreciate it.”   
  
Winn grinned. “You should come out for drinks or something. I’m sure she’ll answer any questions and honestly it’ll be worth it just so Kara can tell you the story of how she told me.”   
  
James smirked. “You’re hyping it up a bit, you better not disappoint me.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” Winn gasped mockingly.

Winn really wished he had any capacity to tell if this was flirty or not. It’d be ideal if it were but it was hard to give a damn when he saw James’s easy smile.

James’s attention drifted to Winn’s computer and pointed at the screen. “What’s that?”   
  
“Oh, uh…” Winn span in his seat and made the image larger for James. “So Kara and I were trying to track the wolf’s movements before he got to National City, so I was working on a map that pinpointed any mysterious ‘animal attacks’ or general dead humans that were found outside of the city going back a few weeks.”

“There’s only a few there.”    
  
Winn hummed. He’d only managed to find five cases and they were all spread out quite far, it seemed pretty useless now they’d dealt with the problem, but Winn spent so long on it that he hadn’t really brought himself to delete it yet.

“Has Kara seen it?” James asked.

“Yeah, she’s been pretty swamped at the moment though. There’s a whole investigation going on or something so between being Cat’s assistant and that, she’s stretched a bit thin.”   


James nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds like she could really use that drink then.”   
  
“You and me, both.”

  
  


* * *

“What do I think the DSO could do to improve?” Vasquez repeated.

She moved around Lucy as she made herself coffee. Lucy would have had Alex pegged as the early bird of this little squad, but today at least, Vasquez had gotten the jump. 

“No offense to Danvers or the Director, but they’ve been walking on eggshells since that rogue started his attacks. They should bring her in as a proper consultant, let her help with investigations.”   
  
“What do you think is holding them back?”   
  
Lucy hopped onto the counter and watched Vasquez. She didn’t react to Lucy’s words but instead focused on stirring her coffee.

“Is it because Kara is Agent Danvers' sister?” Lucy asked.

That got Vasquez’s attention, but instead of surprise, she just looked impressed. “They wouldn’t give that information up willingly.”   
  
“You’re right. They wouldn’t.” Lucy kicked her legs playfully. “But it’s all good, I haven’t exactly mentioned it anywhere.”   
  
“If you already knew that, then why ask?” 

Lucy shrugged. “I gotta have as much perspective as I can. For the record though, I’m just going to mention Kara as the ‘werewolf under DSO care.’ The sister detail is just for my knowledge, Cool?”   
  
“Fine by me, if anything, just say that she doesn’t know how to defend herself so there’s been reluctance to let her out into the field because it’s essentially like sending out a civilian.”   
  
“You’re not exactly wrong there.” Lucy pointed out.

Vasquez smiled. “I’m never wrong.”   
  
“Oh, I think we’re going to be good friends.” 

* * *

  
  


_ "Good morning guys gals and everyone else, the time is seven thirty and the sun is high and bright - that makes two of us”.  _ _  
_ _  
_ Kara winced. Cat probably wouldn’t be thrilled if she heard that, but that wasn’t why Kara was enduring through listening to this show through her earpods as she sat huddled away in the corner of Noonans steadily working her way through their collection of baked goods.

_ “So for any of you nerds just tuning in, last Wednesday, the Furry of National City decided to come out. Oh wait, I’m sorry, the Wolf-Man of National City.'’” _ _  
_ _  
_ God, Kara could practically hear the air quotes.

_ “More importantly, how he seems to be quietly fading into the background noise after only five days, what’s the deal with that? The guy kills nine people and less than a week later we get radio silence? Well, mostly. Couldn’t keep me silent if you tried.” _ _  
_ _  
_ Leslie took a moment to laugh so dramatically that Kara was reminded of a cartoon villain.

_ “And the more I think about it, the more it points to one clear answer. Conspiracy. Theory. Now, we didn’t get to talk about it much yesterday so send me your texts, your tweets, call if you’re a proper boomer and let's get this train moving. But first, a little music to start your day… Here’s… Hungry Like a Wolf, Duran Duran- sing your heart out.” _ _  
_ _  
_ Kara groaned and pulled her earpods out, that was just corny on a whole other level. She kept her hearing tuned in so that she would know when the song was over but was more concerned about how much she would be able to listen to before she had to go into work, in theory she could do what she was doing now. Keep it playing through her earpods and half listen for anything Cat would deem as too far, but she wanted to try and enjoy this time alone for as long as she could.

_ "Okay that was Hungry Like A Wolf by Duran Duran, a classic song, very relevant if you ask me. Now… I've got some great messages already, but first of all we've got a caller on the line. Jason, welcome to Live and Wired!"  _

_ "Thank you Leslie, big fan. Good to know there's still someone who ain't afraid to talk."  _ The voice was gruff, a little nervous maybe. 

_ "So any thoughts on the matter?"  _

_ "Oh total conspiracy. There's gotta be a reason they're not giving us any details, plus there's a lotta weird sh- stuff going on and nobody’s talking about it!"  _

_ "Ooh, weird how?"  _ Leslie sounded positively gleeful.  _ “Furry weird?” _

_ "So you know all the bars and clubs down on 5th? Planet, Enigma, Nocturnal Animals?"  _

_ "Oh, I'm very familiar."  _

_ "Few bodies have been turning up over the last few days, people keep calling them drug overdoses, things like that."  _

_ "But you think otherwise?"  _

_ "Found someone today myself, only this guy wasn't dead. Called the ambulance, but before they got there I saw these marks on his neck, they looked like bite marks."  _

_ "Damn that's heavy."  _ Leslie let out a low whistle. 

_ "Yeah. I'm looking forward to whatever excuse they give for that. Last time I checked, people don't inject drugs into their neck."  _

_ "Too true, thank you for sharing and keep fighting for the truth Jason! Okay next up -"  _

Kara cut the broadcast off and scrambled from her seat, only having the sense of mind to grab Cat's latte from the barista before leaving. 

As she hurried towards CatCo she dialed Alex, praying that her sister wasn't driving and almost cursing to herself when she got her voicemail. 

"Hey, it's me. Listen, you need to listen to Leslie Willis’s  _ Live and Wired _ broadcast, some guy just called in a tip about finding someone down by a strip of bars on 5th. He said the guy had bite marks in his neck but he wasn’t dead. You need to get ahead on this so call me when you get this. I love you."

Kara slipped her phone back into her pocket and scanned herself into the building. 

Apparently it was too much to ask for a relaxed week. 

\--

“Sir, we have a problem.” Alex jogged into the control centre, helmet still tucked under one arm.    
  
She played Kara’s voicemail for them and as she met Vasquez’s concerned look, Alex realised that Lucy was there too. She almost hadn’t realised as Lucy was tiny and had apparently decided she’d had enough of wearing her uniform and opted for a black t-shirt and dark jeans. 

Lucy certainly seemed to be making herself comfortable here. 

“Well shit.” Vasquez said once the message ended. “What’s the plan?”    
  
“We need someone to get down to the hospital.” J’onn said.   
  
“Vasquez, can you try and track down that caller? He could be a problem.”   
  
Vasquez was already moving to her computer. “I’m on it. What do we do with him when I find him? You know these conspiracy theorists, a payout isn’t gonna keep him quiet.”   
  
“If you had one of those men in black style mind wipes, now would be a good time to break them out.” Lucy spoke up. She walked around to Vasquez’s side to peak over her shoulder as she typed away. 

“Fresh out, I’m afraid.” J’onn replied dryly. He turned to Alex. “If he was found on 5th, chances are the victim’s at National City General. Go there, interview whoever you can—we need to establish if this is a vampire or not.”

“Field trip? Can I come?” Lucy asked.

“Not necessary.” Alex replied.

“Actually, I think that’s a good idea.” Alex turned to stare at J’onn, a dozen different protests forming in her mind but he kept talking before she could give voice to them. “This will give Major Lane some in field perspective on how we work.”

Alex sighed. “Fine. I brought my bike so we’ll need to borrow a car.”   
  
“I can ride.” Lucy supplied helpfully.   
  
“No spare helmet, wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” Alex said.

And okay, maybe that sounded mildly like a threat? The disapproving look J’onn leveled her with definitely meant that it didn’t go unnoticed.

“Oh I think you’ll find I'm more than capable of looking after myself, but I appreciate the concern.” Lucy smiled. “So, are you ready to head out or are we just going to keep talking?” 

“Kara said that we need to get ahead on this, which means there’s a small chance there’s going to be reporters. We need to disprove this before they get there. If the victim is awake, buy his silence. It’s his word against the callers.” J’onn said.

“You got it.”

\--

“Ms Grant wants to know if you can track down where a phone call from that happened in Leslie’s show.” Kara said. 

She’d gotten a text from Alex a few minutes after she had left the voicemail, so Kara could at least rest a little easier knowing that they were already on the case and had at least a few minutes of a head start.

Plus Alex could wave her fake FBI badge and get places even reporters under the CatCo banner wished they could.

“Did she say those exact words?” Winn asked.

Kara hesitated for a few moments. “I mean… Not exactly? But she did say some other ones and they were very similar?”

“Kara, I can’t keep breaking the law because you want to impress Cat.” Winn sighed.

His sigh only deepened when Kara pouted.

“Fine! Fine. I’ll do it. Should be easy enough as long as the caller ID isn’t blocked.” Winn replied.

“Is it super illegal to do?” Kara asked. 

“God no, not like we’re bugging it or planning on releasing the guy's details to the public you know?” Winn started typing. “It’ll take thirty minutes tops.”    
  
Kara gave his shoulder a squeeze for good measure. “You’re a lifesaver.”   
  
He grinned at her from over his shoulder, gaze shifting past her for a moment. “I think Cat is about to call-”   
  
“Kiera!”   
  
“-you.” He finished lamely. 

“Shout me when you’ve got something.” 

\--

“Why do I have to be DEA?” Lucy frowned down at her ID pass. She had to hand it to the DSO tech guys, they could really throw together a good fake ID under time pressure.    
  
“I’ve already got the FBI badge.” Alex shrugged. “That guy on the radio said that other victims have been marked as overdoses so it only makes sense for there to be a DEA agent here too.”   
  
They’d been in the waiting room for the last ten minutes, Lucy had never really had much of an opinion on hospitals, but she hated the waiting rooms more than anything else. 

They made her bored, restless. 

“You think they’ll let us see him any time soon?” Lucy asked.

“They said he was still unconscious. He’s stable though so that’s promising.”   
  
“So now we just wait?”   
  
“Got somewhere better to be?” Alex asked.    
  
Lucy got to her feet and groaned. “I’m gonna get coffee.”

Alex waved her off dismissively and pulled her phone out, but didn’t say anything. 

It didn’t take long for Lucy to track down a machine that made coffee that definitely wasn’t the worst that she’d ever had but definitely made it into the top three and after a moment of consideration, got one for Alex too. 

When she returned, she saw Alex talking to a doctor and when she noticed Lucy returning headed over towards her.

Lucy held up the second cup. “I figured you take it black.”   
  
Alex looked surprised but took it.

“I do… Thank you.” 

“What does he want?” Lucy nodded towards the doctor.

“There’s still a couple of the bodies down in the morgue, said we could take a look.” 

“Well he certainly knows the way to a girl's heart.” Lucy downed her coffee and shuddered. “Heads up, this coffee is terrible. Are we heading down then?”

\--

"So, I traced the original call and it came from a phone booth on 5th, the same location where he alleged these other bodies have been found." Winn explained. 

Kara shot him a sidewards glance as Cat pressed her fingers to her temples. As much as Kara and Winn had been happy to find out that information as it definitely discredited the caller as a reliable source, she wasn't certain how Cat felt about it. 

"Thank you Witt, that will be all." 

And yeah, she'd got his name wrong, but Cat had slipped and said thank you? Winn was positively beaming and it was hard for Kara not to roll her eyes fondly as they turned to leave. 

"Kiera. You stay." 

Right, should have known. 

"Yes Ms Grant?" 

Cat dropped her hands from her head and reached for the glass of M&M's. "If this line of investigation doesn't pan out with this 'victim', make sure to schedule a meeting for Leslie to come in tomorrow." 

"Of course, what time?" 

"Before her broadcast.” At Kara’s face, Cat continued. “Oh, don't look so worried, I'm not going to make you come to work that early. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself for a while." 

Kara hadn't even been aware that she looked worried, but she made the note anyway, knowing that if not for Cat, Kara would be there to listen in. Just in case. 

"I know you are Ms Grant, can I ask you something?" 

"If you must." 

“Why exactly does calling from a phonebooth discredit him so much?”   
  
Cat rolled her eyes and for a few moments, Kara was sure she was going to be dismissed for asking what was probably, especially in Cat’s eyes, a stupid question.

She was pleasantly surprised when Cat answered her. 

“It’s not the phone booth, Kiera.” She stood from her chair and Kara resisted the urge to step back. “It’s the anonymity. An unverified anonymous source at that and it comes from one of CatCo’s own shows.”   
  
“But isn’t that a good thing? Getting the word out, even if it’s an anonymous tip? He can tweet it and spread news but coming to CatCo directly can get the word out faster.”

Cat leant forward slightly and rested her chin on her hands as she regarded Kara for a few seconds.   
  
“Yes, while that may be true, it opens the possibility of causing mass panic and paranoia. Even worse, attracting false tips from even more unverified sources. Once you open the door on social media, where it’s all too easy to be anonymous, it becomes a Pandora's box of sorts. That type of information can hurt the public more than help it and in turn hurt CatCo.”

If anybody asked her why she was pushing this so much, why it seemed like she was encouraging Cat to find this caller, she would argue that she was just making sure they could rule this option out. That CatCo tracking down this caller wouldn’t be another problem for The DSO to add to their list. 

It definitely had nothing to with how Cat was looking at her right now, how her eyes had seemed to brighten from studying Kara as they spoke, how not for the first time, Cat seemed to actually  _ see  _ her, seemed intrigued by her. 

It was a little bit addictive. 

That was what pushed Kara to keep talking. To not let this moment slip so easily through her fingers.

Kara nodded along. “More false tips from unknown sources would mean that if we were to spend the time looking into each one, we’re taking the focus away from the credible sources we already have? A dozen mediocre stories that cause panic for one perfect one?”   
  
A smile stretched across Cat’s lips. It wasn’t the vaguely patronising one she directed at board members or the indulgent one she’d often be caught with. This one reached her eyes and seemed to brighten the entire room.

It made Kara feel a little bit breathless.

Was Cat  _ impressed  _ with her?

“Someone’s been paying attention.” Cat said simply.

Kara grinned and made no attempt to hide it. That was as close to a complement as Kara had ever heard from Cat before. She grinned until Cat rolled her eyes again, though with a hint of fondness as she dropped her gaze back to her laptop.

“Now you’ve asked your question, several in fact, so unless you have anything else you need to bother me with…” Cat trailed off. 

It felt like deflection, and Kara was happy to give her the out. 

“No, thank you, Ms Grant.”

\--

Lucy was silent beside her as they made their way through the parking lot. 

Alex’s fingers twitched, itching for her phone - she had so many calls to make to get this situation under control before they could even think about how to deal with the actual threat.

“So, vampire. Huh.” Lucy nodded, more to herself than to Alex as they got into the car. 

“Looks like it.” Alex replied.

“What do we do now?”

Alex backed them out of the space and started to drive them away from the hospital.

“I need to tell J’onn. I need to get a team down here to take the bodies, autopsy reports need to be changed… I need to get a legal team to draw up a contract for that patient…” Alex trailed off with a sigh.

They were lucky he hadn’t remembered much of the attack. That all he could say for certain was that somebody had come up behind him and that he had felt a blinding pain before passing out. That was still too much for them to leave unchecked.

They were even luckier that he had agreed to a hefty payout from the government in exchange for his silence. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw Lucy staring at her. 

“You do realise that i’m a lawyer right? Leave the paperwork to me.” She held a hand up before Alex could protest. “I get it, you don’t trust me but there’s a lot to do and I'm pretty sure what your team would put together in three hours, I could do in an hour tops.”   
  
“Pretty bold statement.” Alex mused.

“I’m a fan of boldness.” Lucy shrugged. 

\--

Forty five minutes.    
  
That was how long it took for Lucy to draw up an airtight NDA that covered all bases. No loopholes that could be exploited and with enough consequences the victim would think twice about breaking it. 

She’d never stop saying it, but damn, Lucy was good at her job.

J’onn was clearly impressed as he read over it and Alex seemed almost annoyed that no fault could be found with it. 

Now, as she hovered by Vasquez over at the control panel, she watched as J’onn and Alex talked in hushed whispers.   
  
If Kara were here, she’d be tempted to get her to eavesdrop.

“They do that a lot, you get used to it.” Vasquez said, not looking up from her computer. “There’s only like, a sixty percent chance they’re talking about you.”   
  
“And the other forty?”   
  
“Kara or the vampire.” Vasquez looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, I’d bet that they’re talking about all three.”   
  
Vasquez’s theory was only further proven right when Alex shot Lucy a quick glare from across the room.

“You might have a point.” When the pair seemed to finish their conversation and turn to walk towards her, Lucy pushed off of the console to meet them. “Wish me luck.”

“Major.” J’onn greeted them as they met in the middle. 

“Everything okay?” Lucy asked.

“We’re going to deploy a small strike team this evening to track down a vampire. We were wondering if you wanted to be a part of it.” J’onn explained.

Well, that certainly explained why Alex didn’t look thrilled.

“I’m in.” Lucy agreed immediately. When was the last time she had gotten to go into the field like this? And to be able to have her first real dive into the world of the supernatural? Yeah. she’d be a fool to say no. “Who else will be involved?”   
  
“Agent Danvers will take point, Vasquez will be her second in command and…” He trailed off and gave Alex a pointed look.

Which could only mean one thing.

Vasquez had really hit the nail on the head.

“We’ll be bringing Kara in too. Vampires don’t have a heartbeat but they do have a very specific scent that should be easy for her to track.” Alex said.

“Vampires are fast, but with the exception of a freshly turned one, their strength doesn’t match up to Kara so she will be an advantage. Agent Danvers will take you down to the armory to get you kitted out with gear and tactical clothing.

“Lead the way, Agent.” Lucy winked.

\--

  
  


_ “You can say no, if you don’t want to do this.”  _ Alex said quietly. 

As much as Kara appreciated the out Alex was offering, there was no chance that she was going to turn this opportunity down. 

“No chance. What time do I need to be ready?”   
_  
_ _ “Call it six, I’ll have someone pick you up from your place. Dress comfortably.”  _

“Are you okay with this?” Kara asked.

Alex sighed into the phone.  _ “Mixed feelings. It’s just a vampire, I think it’ll be a good litmus test. Make sure you eat before you leave.” _ _  
_ _  
_ “I will.” Kara smiled. “Love you.”   
  
_ “Love you too.”  
_

\--

  
Lucy sat alone in the locker room as she laced up her boots. She had to admit, the tactical gear looked good on her, even if they were a loan and weren’t tailored to her size.

There was a level of excitement building in her now, the anticipation for a fight sparking within her.

As soon as Kara got there and had been briefed, they would be heading out.

“The Director told me you were taking part in this operation.” Her father's words startled her from her thoughts.

Lucy jumped to her feet and greeted her father with a salute, relaxing when he returned it.

“What better way to get an insight into their operations than getting up close and personal.” Lucy shrugged and okay, it wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was far from the reason that she was doing this.

“It’s good. Had they not asked you themselves I would have insisted. I hear they’re bringing the werewolf in too?”   


His refusal to even acknowledge Kara by her name left a sickening feeling in her stomach. It spoke volumes of how he viewed her and anybody like her. 

“That’s right.” Lucy nodded. “She should be here soon.”

“I have dinner with the Mayor that I can't miss. But I have something I need you to do.”

His words raised the hairs on the back of her neck. There was something about his tone that had her entire body on edge. Even more so as he moved closer into the room and reached into his pocket to pull out a vial.

“When the opportunity presents itself, inject it with this. I will have a small team on call for you to contact and they will take over from there.”   
  
Lucy stared at the vial, the swirling blues and purples within the small chamber.

“What are you- You want me to drug her? So you can  _ kidnap _ her?” Lucy asked, careful to keep the outrage out of her voice. 

“We need that werewolf.” Her father said. “That thing is a threat and we need to know if we can use it to our advantage and if not, find out what makes them tick.”   


J’onn was right. Part of Lucy had known it was a possibility, but to have her father stood in front of her literally handing over the evidence of this? It was hard not to be thrown entirely off guard by the situation.

Lucy took a steadying breath and took the vial from his hands, it was cold to the touch and Lucy didn’t want to know what was inside it.

She had to get rid of him.

“How do I do it?” Lucy asked quietly.

The almost pleasant smile she received made her feel sick.

“My source says that the back of the neck should be the most effective place.” he pulled a cellphone from another pocket and handed it over. “A burner. Call the number programmed into it, say the location and leave. They’ll take it from there.”   
  
How much time had he spent planning this out? Lucy had to wonder if the whole reason they were here was a thinly veiled excuse for her father to get his hands on a werewolf for his misguided plans of strengthening the army. 

“How will you explain it? Won’t they know it was us behind it?” Lucy asked. 

“There are plenty of people out there who would go out of their way to get their hands on a wolf like this. If they suspect us, you leave the talking to me. Understood?”   
  
Lucy slipped the items into her pockets, mind already made up.

He wasn’t going to get away with this.

“Understood.”

He nodded. “Good. I’ll take my leave, can’t keep the mayor waiting.”

Lucy didn’t speak as he left, a burst of anger flared in her chest and she wanted nothing more than to let it out, to punch the nearest surface she could.

No. Better plan.

Lucy counted to twenty, slowly, to herself. As soon as she felt a little more grounded, Lucy started to move and headed directly towards J’onn’s office.

  
  


\--

  
  


“Kara, a hoodie, seriously?” Alex looked her up and down.

“You said to dress comfortably.” Kara pointed out, pouting at her sister and shoving her hands into the soft pockets.

“But a blue one?”   
  
“It was either this or red, I don’t exactly have a collection of these things you know.”

J’onn began to speak, but Kara’s attention was drawn away as she sensed Lucy approaching the office, her heartbeat was racing and as she threw the door open and Kara saw the wide eyed look she was sporting, Kara felt anxiety settle in her chest.

“Major Lane.” J’onn greeted.

Lucy waved a hand and closed the door behind her. “It’s Lucy, listen, has my dad left?” She looked to Kara. “Can you hear him?”   
  
Kara let her hearing expand as far as she could, shaking her head when she couldn’t pick him up.

“He called his car around, he should be gone by now.” J’onn added. “What’s wrong?”

Lucy turned her focus to J’onn, closing the door behind her and walking over to his desk.

“Do you remember your concern about why he was here?” She asked.

Kara looked between them and shared a look with Alex as J’onn’s face twisted into a frown. She saw Alex’s fingers twitch towards her gun as she stared at Lucy.

“You were right.” Lucy continued, pulling something from her pocket and slamming it onto the desk for them all to see.

It was a vial, encased in what looked like silver. Kara frowned at it, she could see the subtle swirls of purple within the liquid and had a pretty solid idea as to what it was, yet she still found herself asking the question.

“What is it?”   
  
“He gave it to me to knock you out, so I'm guessing it’s nothing good.” Lucy replied, giving Kara a careful look from the corner of her eye.

And knowing her sister, Kara really should have known that Alex would not have reacted well to that news.

If Lucy had expected it, she didn’t do anything to stop Alex from rushing her, shoving her into the wall the furthest from Kara and pinning her to the wall with an arm against her throat. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Alex hissed.

“Danvers!” J’onn warned. “Let her go.”   
  
Alex ignored him. “Answer me.”    
  
Lucy held her gaze, almost defiantly. “Kinda hard with your arm over my jugular, not that i’m complaining. Could at least buy a girl dinner first.” She added almost teasingly.

Alex must have pressed down a little harder, spurring Kara to move her legs to approach them as Lucy continued.

“Right, time and place. Look, I didn’t know, I swear. He just gave me that, a burner and instructions to get Kara away from you, drug her, and call a team to get them to collect her.”   


Kara came up beside Alex and dropped a hand onto her sister's shoulder. “Alex, let her go.”   


“You know there’s wolfsbane in that vial.” Alex pointed out.

“And it’s on the desk, if she was going to hurt me, Lucy wouldn’t be here right now.” Kara replied.

“How do we know it’s not just a ruse?” Alex turned her head just enough to meet Kara’s gaze.

“Because I've been keeping your secrets since I got here.” Lucy spoke up.

It took actual effort to ease Alex’s arm from the woman's throat and tug her back a step. Kara didn’t let go of Alex’s arm though, she could feel the tension in her muscles and knew now that it wouldn’t take much for Alex to throw a punch.

Lucy flashed Kara a grateful look and straightened up against the wall, completely unphased for someone staring down an extremely pissed Alex Danvers.

“I know that Kara is your foster sister, that she came into your custody twelve years ago. I know where she went to college and I know that she works at CatCo as Cat Grant’s assistant.” She turned her attention back to Kara, this time there was almost something apologetic. “There’s a lot of things I know that he doesn’t.”

“She’s telling the truth.” Kara said quietly.

Her heartbeat was steady, the only spike was from when Alex tackled her. 

“That doesn’t mean shit, Kara.” Alex replied.

“Kinda does.” Kara pointed out, ignoring the glare that Alex flashed her way. “I get that you don’t trust her, but she’s telling the truth. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t. I… I trust her Alex. Give her a chance.”   
  
Alex glared for a few more moments before she sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose and turned away from them all. Kara glanced back over at Lucy who was watching them all curiously.

“Fuck it. Fine. What do we do?” Alex turned back to them, directing her question to J’onn. 

"You three deal with the vampire, I'm assuming the phone is being tracked in some way. I'll have Vasquez stay here and…" He frowned. "Do whatever it is she needs to do." 

Apparently the finer arts of hacking were not J'onn's strong suit. 

"Sir, with all due respect, I need Vasquez." Alex stepped forward. "I'm sure there's someone else who can hack the phone, but this is Kara's first official time out in the field. I need Vasquez with me on this." 

The "and I don't trust Lucy" went unspoken but was heard clearly amongst them. 

"Fine. Major Lane, we'll go brief Vasquez and she can find us a suitable stand in, Danvers, make sure Kara is ready to head out." 

J'onn cast a careful look at Kara, and she got the impression that he was giving them time alone for Alex's sake. 

"I can't fucking believe this." Alex muttered once the door closed behind J'onn and Lucy. 

"Alex…" 

"I don’t trust her, Kara. I can't trust someone who had a vial of wolfsbane to use on you." 

"Do you trust me?" 

Alex looked offended that she would even ask. 

"Of course I do." 

Kara reached for Alex's hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Then trust my judgement on her. It's her dad who did this, she came straight to us." 

"She knows where you work, Kara, doesn't that scare you?" Alex asked. 

Kara shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a whole conversation about that later, but I also get the impression that J'onn knew that she had that information? I think she's on our side, Alex." 

Alex sighed. "You stay by my side tonight, okay? When we pair off, you stay with me." 

"Of course." 

\--

"I think Danvers wants to kill me." Lucy said. 

"Puppy? Or Agent?" Vasquez frowned. 

"Agent." 

"Oh yeah, that makes more sense. Don't take it personally. She generally wants to kill anyone who she thinks is a threat to Kara." 

Speaking of Kara, Lucy wondered what the chances were of her listening in on this conversation were. 

Since they had left the van, they had split into pairs. In the short radius they had guessed the vampire must be operating within, there was only one bar that was closed and boarded up - your typical former back alley dive bar and Alex had insisted that would be where it was hiding. 

Alex had also said there was a chance that the second the vampire caught Kara's scent, it would run, hence why they split up. 

"I guess there isn't much I can do about that." Lucy sighed. "Once this is over and my report is done they'll just send me somewhere else." 

Vasquez stopped walking and gave Lucy a long look before holding a hand up and reaching up to her earpiece with the other. 

"Hey super wolf, anything yet?" 

_ "Nope, not sure what I'm meant to be looking for?"  _ Kara sniffed.  _ "It's not like there's a heartbeat for me to follow?"  _

Alex sighed, long and agonising and Lucy could only assume the pair had already had this discussion a few times. 

_ "Just trust me, okay? J'onn said they smell like death. It'll be kinda hard to miss."  _

Kara grumbled but didn't respond. 

"We'll check back in when the bar is in sight." Vasquez said, clicking the earpiece and beginning to walk again. "You don't sound too happy about the idea of leaving." she pointed out. 

Lucy sighed, relaxing her arms to her sides. “I just… How do I move on from this? Kara is such a nice person and all my dad can see is a potential to turn her into a weapon or an experiment. I’ve tried to turn a blind eye to his behaviour for so long.” she sighed again. “And I'm just… Tired.”   
  
Vasquez looked like she was about to ask another question, but they were stopped by Alex’s voice in their ear.   
  
_ “Kara’s got something. One vampire inside the bar, we’re at the backdoor.” _ _  
_ _  
_ “Looks like therapy is on hold.” Vasquez said. “Copy that, we’re rounding the corner now.”   
  
Lucy raised her pistol once more and followed Vasquez’s lead. As they rounded the corner the boarded up windows of the bar came into view. It looked like nobody had set foot in there for months but…

“Danvers, there’s a bike parked out front.” Vasquez said. 

_ “They’re moving.”  _ Kara whispered.

_ “Kara, wait-”  _ They didn’t need their earpieces to hear the sound of what could only be Kara forcing her way through the back door.  _ “Hold point outside the entrance, if the bike is the vampires they will try to escape.” _

“You got it.” Lucy replied, training her gun onto the doorway.

There were only a few moments of silence before all hell broke loose.

It started with Kara yelling and the fighting started. It was disorienting to hear the sounds through her earpiece and the building in front of her. It sounded like bar stools were being thrown and smashed, a gunshot being fired, a surprised yelp from Kara.

_ “What- Alex?” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Kara, move!” _ _  
_ _  
_ The last thing Lucy and Vasquez expected was for Kara to fly through the boarded windows of the bar, clearing the alleyway and rolling to a stop against the wall. 

“Kara?’ Lucy called. 

“Ow.” came the mumbled reply.

“Vasquez, what the fuck? I thought vampires weren’t meant to be that strong?” Lucy snapped. 

The object of their conversation jumped through the window, beginning to advance on Kara with a surprising amount of speed.

“Shit, new blood.” Vasquez took aim and fired, the bullet flying past his shoulder.

He seemed young, dressed in ripped jeans and denim jacket with dark hair slicked back. He turned to face them at hearing their voices, lips curled up into a snarl.

“New blood?” Lucy asked.

“New vampire, Danvers, you okay?” Vasquez called.

_ “Ugh, i’m fine.”  _ Alex called back. Lucy could hear the sound of boots against broken glass but her attention was focused on the vampire.

Namely because of the fact he was lifting the motorcycle up like it was a toy and turning towards them with a sneer.

“Looks like you girls got my message.” He said, arrogance echoed through his entire body. “Wasn’t expecting a party though. Nevermind, more fun for me.”

Lucy had experienced a lot of things in her relatively short life.

A motorcycle being thrown at her?    
  
Yeah, that was a new one.

In a burst of speed that Lucy hadn’t even known was possible, Kara appeared a few feet in front of them hands up as she took the impact of the bike. The force of it pushed Kara back until she almost landed in Lucy’s arms before she managed to get a solid hold of the vehicle.

It was probably the coolest thing Lucy had ever seen in her life.

Even if the badassery of the moment was slightly dimmed by Kara turning her head so that she could see Lucy and Vasquez with the brightest grin on her face.

“Oh my god, I caught it!” She beamed.

“Good job super wolf, now focus!” Vaquesz snapped.

“Right.” Kara threw the bike aside and started towards the vampire.    
  
Alex climbed through the window to join them in the alleyway. They had him pretty much surrounded and it was hard enough getting a clean shot on him due to his speed, with Kara in the mix it brought a new level of problems. Their bullets could do just as much damage to her and the last thing Lucy wanted to do right now was risk hitting her.

Kara, for her part, gave as good as she got. The two creatures wrestling against each other and trading blows.    


They all watched as Kara managed to wrap her arms around his chest, pinning his arms in place despite his hands digging into her skin hard enough to bruise. 

"Vasquez, the restraints!" Alex ordered. 

Vasquez holstered her gun and pulled out what, at a glance, looked like handcuffs, if not slightly thicker. But Lucy knew that they must be made of silver for them to be of any use. 

"No no no, I wouldn't do that!" Kara warned and Lucy snapped her gaze back up in time to see the vampire sink his fangs into Kara's wrist. Kara’s eyes flashed bright gold and she hissed in pain. 

Then he was throwing his head backwards, skull connecting with Kara's face in what would have been a nose breaking move if she had been human. Freeing himself from her hold only to spin around to grab her, his nails cutting into her skin. 

Lucy dropped her aim to his legs and fired. 

He staggered and let out a cry of pain and Lucy was in the middle of lining up a second shot when he threw Kara. 

There was a tiny moment where Lucy was sure she heard Vasquez mumble 'oh fuck' under her breath, but it was lost to her as Kara crashed into them both, sending them into a sprawling heap on the floor. 

Having a bike thrown at her was one thing, but a werewolf? 

Definitely the weirdest night of Lucy's life so far and she was _loving_ _it._

"Sorry, sorry." Kara groaned, sounding more than a little dazed. 

Vasquez rolled out from under Kara as they heard the vampire snarl and ran towards him. Kara sat up sluggishly so Lucy could move again. As she did so, she saw Alex and Vasquez hovering over the vampire who was on the floor shaking - seemingly in the midst of a seizure. 

"What's happening?" Lucy asked. she rubbed at the back of her head where she could already feel the beginning of a headache flare. 

"Werewolf blood is… Poisonous to vampires and vice versa." Kara explained quietly, she turned her gaze away from her sister to roll the torn sleeve of her hoody up to reveal the bite mark, clear even amongst the blood gathering and dripping from the two much clearer puncture marks. 

"Huh." Lucy nodded. "Sucks for him then. Get it? Sucks?"

Lucy struggled to her feet to help secure the injured vampire with Alex and Vasquez trailing behind. Suddenly, the vampire shot up with a loud shriek.

"Oh shit," Lucy heard Vasquez mutter behind her, before the vampire sped in front of Lucy and took a chunk out of her shoulder. The pain was so blinding that for a moment, everything seemed to go white, her yell of pain getting lodged in her throat and it took everything Lucy had to wrench her focus back on the man before he was gone as fast as he appeared.

Behind her, she could hear Alex yelling orders to Vasquez and the sound of a Jeep starting. Kara appeared above her.

When had she gotten on the floor?   
  
Kara crouched beside her, her mouth moving but Lucy struggled to pick out the words amongst the static of pain. 

She  _ did  _ register Kara’s hands covering her shoulder and a beat passed before Lucy became aware of the sudden absence of feeling, a pleasant numbness she could only ever associate with some good level morphine.

“They’re going after him.” Kara looked pained and thoughtful. “Screw it, I'll be faster than backup. Gonna carry you, okay?”   
  
Even though Lucy had seen Kara catch a fucking motorcycle with her bare hands, the ease in which Kara lifted her up bridal style still surprised her. 

"Sounds ... fun… should at least… save it for the wedding though. ‘f i’m good, doc—" She heard herself say, before everything faded to black.

\--

Kara tried to keep her senses focused outside of the medical bay she was currently holed up in. 

Namely, she was listening out for General Lane. No doubt word had gotten back to him that they were back at the DSO and that Lucy hadn't followed through on his orders. So that was going to be an interesting conversation.

Kara had already resigned herself to another sleepless night. 

"I'm surprised Alex let me be in here with you." Lucy spoke up. 

Kara sat up from her laying position and swung her legs over the side of the cot to face her neighbour. "Oh hey, welcome back to the land of the living.”

Lucy’s answer was a groan as she dropped her head back to the cot, hand coming up to press against the bandage on her shoulder.

“And for the record, I feel like Alex has realized that you had more than enough chances to take me out if you really wanted to. Plus, I could crush you like a grape."

Lucy grimaced. "Well that's a lovely visual." 

"But you know I wouldn't do it, same way I know you wouldn't hurt me." 

"Do you always trust people so easily?" Lucy asked. 

"Nope." Kara smiled. "But... You took on a vampire with us, you haven't been distrustful  _ and  _ I am basically a walking lie detector test so…" 

"Duly noted." 

"How's the pain?" 

Lucy sat up and rolled her shoulders experimentally. "Props to that vampire for using you like a bowling ball. Definitely gets points for originality there, but Jesus, I think the bike would have hurt less." 

"I can't believe I caught that!" Kara grinned. 

"How strong are you?" Lucy asked. “And more pressingly, I’m not going to turn into a vampire am I?”

Kara shrugged. "Nah, you might get a cool scar though. But my strength? It's hard to find my limit, I push myself harder in different situations so it makes it difficult to get an accurate result." 

Alex had tried to figure it out before, but had given up when it was hard to test a werewolf that wouldn't even shift to make use of their full capacity. 

"What happens now?" Kara asked. 

"Well…" Lucy tipped her head back thoughtfully. "My father will probably come and throw some kind of tantrum. He’ll send me off to the worst assignment he can think of for me for disobeying his orders. Before he can do that though, I'll finish my report and close the investigation on the DSO. I'll even throw in a few suggestions to keep you on the books for more protection and maybe get you some more funding."

The resignation in Lucy's tone struck something within Kara, the fact that she was going to be punished by the General for doing the right thing, but she was still going to do it anyway. 

Kara didn't know what to say, didn't have time to think of something before her hearing picked up Alex talking, but far from them. 

_ "Do you think that's a good idea?" Alex asked.  _

_ "From yours and Vasquez's initial reports, Lane sounds like she would make a promising Agent." J'onn replied. "I understand that you don't trust her -"  _

_ "Kara trusts her." Alex cut him off. "And… Lucy took a shot to try and protect Kara. I have my doubts, but, I trust yours and Kara's judgement."  _

_ "She has a skill set that could help us a lot."  _

Kara grinned and focused back on Lucy, trying to keep one ear on the conversation as Alex and J'onn got closer. 

Lucy, however, looked confused. "What's happening?" 

"What would you say if I asked you to stay here?" 

Lucy frowned. "Like… Right here? Or in National City?" 

"Both. What if we offered you a job here, at the DSO, as an agent?" 

"They wouldn't go for that." Lucy scoffed. "Your sister hates me and I know you have that adorable puppy dog eye look going on but I don't think even you have that much power." 

"What if I told you that they thought you had a skill set that could be really useful and even Alex agreed? What if I told you that J'onn and Alex were walking down the hallway right now to come in and offer you a job?" 

"I…" Lucy met her gaze apprehensively. "I would ask you if you'd help me do this? Because other than Vasquez you're the only person who hasn't avoided me completely or treated me like I'm here to ruin everything, even though you're the one who had every reason to." 

Kara grinned and kicked her leg out to gently bump it against Lucy's. "And I'd say, yeah, of course. I don't know what's happening here, or where we go from here, but I think you belong here. And you're gonna be great." 

"I'm always great." Lucy replied immediately and for a moment Kara was almost reminded of Cat. She could hear the deflection in Lucy's tone, even as her laughter faded and her smile softened. "Thank you, Kara." 

The door clicked and J'onn and Alex stepped inside. Lucy flashed Kara a quick look that she returned with an encouraging smile. 

"Yes." Lucy said as soon as she met J'onn's gaze. 

Alex gave Kara an accusatory glare. "Snoop!" 

Kara held up her hands. "You talk very loud." 

"So, Major Lane. There's a place here at the DSO for you. I don't have anything set in stone but we can come to some kind of agreement." 

"Look, as long as I get to do more of  _ that _ , I'm in." Lucy replied. 

J'onn smiled. "Okay then, Agent." 

Lucy looked so happy that Kara felt light inside. It was funny that between her, Alex and Lucy, they were all bruised—and in Kara and Lucy’s sake, bloody as well as exhausted—but Kara felt so happy she didn't think she'd be able to sleep. 

The moment was squandered the second Kara heard General Lane in the control room. 

Alex noticed her frown and reached for her arm immediately, studying the bandage. "What is it? Does it hurt?" 

"It's not my arm." Kara looked over to Lucy. "Your dad is here." 

Lucy groaned and hopped off the cot. "Well, we knew this was going to happen. Let’s go face the music." 

\--

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Alex said quietly, slowing down to fall into step beside Lucy.

“I kinda do.” Lucy replied. “You want to make sure he stays off your back, I'll make that happen.”

“Well… We’ve got your back then.”    


Lucy couldn’t deny that, with J’onn leading them through the halls and Kara trailing a few steps behind them. Lucy had to admit that she felt touched by the fact that these virtual strangers were willing to look out for her.

“Careful Danvers, you almost sound like you care.” Lucy teased.

Alex rolled her eyes and fixed her gaze firmly in front of her. “You helped Kara back there. I think you’ve earned a pass tonight.”

“I’ll take it. And for the record, I know there’s a lot of things we need to talk about, but I think that’s something best done over drinks.”   
  
“Only if you’re buying.”

“You got yourself a deal, Danvers.”

It was strange to think that only a few hours ago, Alex had pinned her to a wall ready to beat her senseless.

Lucy spotted her father the moment they reached the control room and it was clear from his expression that he was  _ pissed. _

“General.” J’onn greeted tersely as he reached the General first. “Not that we don’t appreciate your visits, but we didn’t expect you here at this hour.”

Her father’s gaze drifted over each of them, lingering for a few seconds on Lucy before he looked over her shoulder at where Kara had come to a stop, his expression souring even more.

“Yes, well, when I heard that the mission my daughter had been on ended in her being injured, I felt the need to come and see for myself.”

Lucy wondered if Kara picked up a lie at his words, because she certainly saw the red flag. She had developed a reputation for injuries whenever she’d been in the field back in the early days of her career and her father had never shown up this soon.

“It gave me the opportunity to have a first hand experience of the difficulties that the DSO face.” Lucy replied. “I am wholly confident that had this organisation received the necessary funding and resources, we would have been able to contain the vampire, isn’t that right, Director?”   
  
“Correct.” J’onn agreed. “My agents pursued him well outside the city limits before they lost his tracks. It will be unlikely that he poses a threat to the city now.”   
  
“And how can you say that with such confidence?” Her father all but spat.

“The vampire bit Kara, too.” J’onn answered calmly. “It’s common knowledge that even in small doses, werewolf blood is poisonous to vampires, and without proper treatment, he will be dead by morning.”

Lucy heard Kara’s quiet sigh behind her and despite only knowing for a couple of days, knew the woman well enough to know that Kara was feeling guilty.   


“While not a resounding success, it’s a victory nonetheless.” J’onn spoke up. “A long day but the threat is no longer immediate.”   


The General frowned at him, but before he could say anything. Lucy stepped forward to stand beside J’onn and met her father’s gaze head on. She felt Kara and Alex move forward to stand behind her.

“It will all be in my report tomorrow. But I feel the need to inform you that I’m closing down the investigation on the DSO.” Lucy said.

The anger that flashed through her father’s face? The best thing she’d seen all day.

“That isn’t your decision to make—”   
  
“Actually it is.” Lucy cut him off and okay, he was absolutely starting to turn a slight shade of purple. This really was the best night ever. “This case was assigned to me for that very reason and during the course of my investigation I have found that this branch is doing the best they can with the limited resources at their disposal. The DSO needs support, which is why I will be formally requesting a transfer.”   


He stepped closer, disregarding everybody else in the room and for a moment, Lucy felt like a child again under his withering glare. She focused on the two women behind her and pushed through the moment, lifting her chin defiantly. 

“I will not sign off on this.” He hissed.

“You don’t have to.” Lucy shrugged. “I have other, less biased channels I intend on taking this to. Especially in regards to making sure Kara is protected under the DSO in a more... official capacity. Wouldn’t want anyone trying to kidnap a government agent to experiment on now, would we?”   
  
She finished speaking with a saccharine smile and Lucy knew that she didn’t need Kara’s super hearing to know that her father’s blood pressure had skyrocketed.

“You would rather work beside that monster?” He roared, his glare shifting to Kara and Lucy instinctively stepped in front of the woman.   
  
“Careful daddy,” Lucy warned, “You’re making a scene. Besides, the only monster here is the person who tried to get his daughter to drug an innocent woman to ship off to an underground facility for experiments. And that definitely isn’t Kara.”    
  
J’onn, ever the mediator, took another step towards the General. “If there isn’t anything else we can help you with, I suggest you call your car. It is awfully late and we still have a lot of work to do.”

General Lane glared at J’onn and stepped forward to Lucy, almost as if to grab her, but she held her ground. 

“This is my choice, leave the DSO or I make sure the President knows what you tried to do tonight.” Lucy added for good measure.

The General took a step back, his nostrils flaring in barely concealed anger. “You’ve already lost your sister, you’d really throw away our relationship for these people?”    
  
“These people have shown me more genuine respect and kindness in a few days than you have in the last fifteen years, so yeah. I’m good with this choice.”   


The stress of this whole discussion was doing her headache no favours and Lucy longed for a bed and an ice pack, but she knew that she had just thrown her cards on the table, that there would be no sleeping until everything was official.

She’d make time to reflect on the fact that she had officially just burnt the final bridge connecting her to her family another day. 

“When this all comes back to bite you, don’t come crying to me.” 

“Considering I’ve already been bitten once tonight, I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.”    
  
She held steady as he shot them all one last glare before storming from the room. It was only when his footsteps could no longer be heard, did Lucy finally relax.

“Not gonna lie, that was a  _ lot,  _ but can we just take a moment to appreciate that my father does a wonderful impression of that kid from Willy Wonka who turned into a giant blueberry?”   
  
There was a tense moment of silence before Kara snorted and broke into laughter. Lucy turned in time to see Alex try to mask her own amusement.

J’onns hand was warm and comforting as it came to rest on her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Never better. Though I am going to need to go borrow your office for a while.” Lucy replied. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”   
  
“You got a plan?” Alex asked.

“Well, it’s not like I've got the President on speed dial, but we’re on good terms.” Lucy turned to Kara. “By the time I’m done, you and this place will be protected behind so many layers of red tape.”   
  
“Do you think he’ll stay away? In exchange for keeping it quiet—what he tried to do?” Kara asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Probably not. I know my father and he’ll try to do everything in his power to get control. If I can make it a living hell for him, then I don’t see why not?” She paused at the mixed expressions from the group. “What? I don’t do half measures, and if I’m burning bridges I’m sure as shit committing to it.

Kara was the first to smile, even going so far as to reach out and take Lucy’s hand. “What do you need?”   
  
“I need to go finish my report and get a line on the President as soon as she wakes up.”   
  
Alex sighed and began to walk off. “I’ll go make coffee.”

  
  


\--

  
  


When Non received a message shortly before midnight with a series of coordinates, he hadn’t been sure what to expect.

But as he reached the cellphone tower just outside the city limits, he wasn’t expecting to be greeted by armed guards or a persistent hum that set his teeth on edge.

“You the werewolf?” the nearest one asked, hand clenched tightly around his rifle with a finger locked on the trigger.

Non ignored him. “Where is he?”

“On route. A vampire vaulted the fence. Started convulsing and attacked two of my men before we could sedate him.”   
  
Non resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Typical humans. Can’t even control one vampire.

“And the vampire?”   
  
The guard gestured for Non to follow with a nod of his head and it took only a few steps before Non picked up on the telltale scent of a vampire, the muttered words of pain under breath.

It had barricaded itself in a tool shed like an animal crawling off to die. 

Non held his hand out and a syringe was placed silently in his hands.   
  
“I’d stay back if I were you. Wouldn’t want you to get hurt, now.” Non said, letting his fangs show and delighting in the way the guards took a step away from him.

Upon ripping the doors open, Non realized that there was no need for such alarm. The vampire lay on the floor, convulsing. His expression twisted in pain, blood dripping from his lips.

There was only one thing that Non knew of that could cause such a reaction and it was that knowledge that threw him into action, jabbing the syringe into the vampire's neck. Just as the vampire slipped into unconsciousness, Non heard a car approach and come to a stop not far behind him. 

“Ah, you got my message then?”   
  
Non stepped out of the toolshed as the car door closed, the passenger leaning against it with practiced ease.

“Maxwell.” Non greeted. “Surely your soldiers can take care of one vampire?”    
  
“Apparently not, otherwise I wouldn’t have called you here.” Max walked closer until he reached Non’s side, staring at the vampire with interest. “Is it still alive?”   
  
“For now.” Non replied. “Though you might want to act fast.”   
  
“Oh?”   
  
“He’s poisoned. My assumption is that this new blood tried to bite a werewolf. No vampire in their right mind would try to drink from a wolf.”   
  
“Interesting.” Max smiled. “One of yours?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Ah, so the DSO’s pet then?”   
  
“That would be my guess, yes.”   
  
Max’s smile only grew as he gestured to the guards. Non watched as they set about putting restraints on the vampire.

“He’ll make a good specimen in that case. Thank you for your assistance Non, be sure you check your account in the morning.” 

Non took that as his cue to leave and it wasn’t until he had long left the site in his wake, did the humming finally stop.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How much fun did I have writing Leslie's radio show? SO MUCH
> 
> disclaimer: all american government things are Joy my american beta reader's words  
> but from both of us: fuck the us gov
> 
> UK gov? You're on thin fuckin ice


	4. Video killed the radio star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are strengthened, tensions between Leslie and Cat reach their boiling point and Kara makes an impulsive decision that could change the playing field

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Video killed the radio star" by The Buggles
> 
> So while it's technically Saturday for me now, it's still Friday for some of you so TECHNICALLY i'm not that late

  
When Cat stepped out of her bedroom, she was surprised to see Carter sat at the kitchen counter. 

The counter was clear and there was no mistaking that he had been waiting for her to emerge. 

"You're up early." Cat greeted. She slipped her phone into her bag and pressed a kiss to the top of his head as she passed. 

"I want to come to CatCo before school, since you’re going to work early." Carter said, no intention about beating around the bush. 

Cat hesitated, normally she wouldn't say no but she didn't exactly want him to be around Leslie. 

Then again, Leslie wasn't exactly known for punctuality so by the time she did show up for their meeting, Carter would most likely already be on his way to school. 

Plus, if it meant that she got to spend a bit more time with her son then she wasn't going to say no. 

"If you're ready to go, then I don't see why not." 

Carter slipped off the stool and lifted her backpack onto his shoulder. 

"Are you ready?" He asked.   
  
  


He didn't speak again until they were in the car, his gaze was fixed out of the window. 

"Can we go to a bakery first?" 

Cat raised an eyebrow. "A bit early for all that sugar isn't it?" 

"Just one!" He pleaded, grinning when Cat called out some directions to the place she knew Kara seemed to frequent. 

"Happy?" 

"I do have one more _little_ request." Carter shifted to meet her gaze. 

"Which is?" 

"I want to get something for Kara too." 

Cat sighed. She really should have seen that one coming. Carter was obsessed with Kara and it wouldn't surprise her if the reason he had wanted to come along this morning was purely to see her.

"Darling, Kiera won't even be there. The only reason I'm going in early is because of a meeting." 

Carter shrugged and if he was disheartened by her words, then he certainly didn't show it. 

"Doesn't mean we still can't get her something. _Kara_ buys me bear claws so I want to do something nice for her too." Carter explained, narrowing his eyes at Cat when he said Kara's name. 

They pulled to a stop outside the bakery and the driver turned off the engine before meeting Cat's gaze in the rear view mirror. 

"What am I getting Ms. Grant?" 

"Four bear claws and…" she trailed off to meet Carter's gaze. "What does she eat?" 

Carter stared at her in what could only be described as disbelief and in a rare moment of confidence turned to speak to the driver directly. 

"Two sticky buns please." 

Cat chose to focus on the feeling of pride at seeing Carter speak up to someone who may as well be a total stranger, and not the frown starting to take over his face that made her feel like she was about to be told off by her own son. 

He at least had the grace to wait until the driver was out of the car before Carter spoke again. 

"You don't know that Kara likes sticky buns?" 

Cat scoffed and looked out of the window. "She's my assistant, Carter, I don't need to know those things." 

Carter picked at the sleeve of his sweater. "Kara knows everything about you." 

"That's what she's paid to do." 

Carter sighed softly and she could feel his disappointment from where she was sat. 

"No it isn't." He replied eventually. "None of your other assistants cared enough to talk to me, and she always has." 

They turned at the same time to meet each other's gaze, and Cat wouldn't admit it, but she was pretty sure that she was more reluctant to do so than Carter at that moment. 

"If you won't even call her by her actual name, the least you could do is know her coffee order." Carter said. 

Well, okay then.

She shouldn't be surprised by Carter's perceptive skills, he was her child after all. But calling her out on anything to do with Kara? That was unsettling. 

Thankfully, her driver returned before she could be on the receiving end of anymore Carter based judgment.   
  


It was a short lived respite though, because the moment they stepped out of her private elevator and into the dimly lit bullpen, Kara was there. 

And judging from the slightly hunched way she was sitting, Cat wondered if the woman was actually asleep.

“Kara!” Carter ran towards her and judging from the way Kara’s whole body jerked, Cat knew that she had been right. “Mom said that you wouldn’t be here.”  
  
Kara twisted in her seat to face him and smiled brightly. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I figured i’d come down and get a head start on some work.”   
  
Cat walked closer and eyed Kara’s desk, the screen of her computer was dark but surely enough there was a stack of papers on her desk.

“And what exactly are you doing?” Cat found herself asking.

“It’s the applicants for the sports editor position, considering what happened with Derek, I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in doing a bit of research.” As Kara explained, Cat flicked through the papers, taking note of the post-it notes attached to several pages. “You know, their twitter feeds and things like that, anything that would raise red flags.”

“How very journalistic of you.”   
  
The tips of Kara’s ears turned red as she turned back around to face her computer, shaking her mouse to wake the screen up. Carter dragged Winn’s chair over to Kara’s desk with his free hand and raised an eyebrow at Cat.

“I also made sure to let Jen on reception know to send Leslie up as soon as she gets here.” Kara continued. “I know she isn’t exactly punctual but I didn’t want to risk her show starting late and you have a conference call so I wanted to make sure you had time to prepare before that."

"You have been busy." 

"What have you got there?" Kara asked Carter. 

He grinned and set the box on the desk, pushing it towards Kara. "Mom brought me bear claws and we got you some sticky buns." 

Kara's eyes widened in surprise before the brightest smile lit up her face, she glanced quickly back up at Cat before focusing on Carter. "Thank you, that's really kind." 

"Yes, well. Carter insisted." Cat dismissed.

Carter, for his part, just rolled his eyes. 

“So now it’s even better that you’re here because now you get to eat them fresh.” Carter said.

With only them on the floor, it was all too clear when they heard the elevator doors open. All three of them looked over to see Leslie step out, the frown on her face clear to Cat even from this distance.

Trust her to be on time on the one day Cat had almost been wishing she wouldn't.

Leslie was a firecracker, so Cat wasn’t particularly looking forward to the conversation and for once, Cat actually hoped that Leslie wouldn’t force her hand into firing her. 

“I have to go now Carter,” Cat began, bending to hug her son. “The car is waiting downstairs to take you to school but you can stay with Kiera for a little while if you’d like. Have a good day okay? And I’ll see you tonight.”  
  
“Okay, love you mom.”   
  
“I love you too Sweetheart.”   
  
Cat straightened up and looked over as Leslie reached them, a slight sneer on her face as she looked at the three of them, spending a few seconds longer staring at Kara. She didn’t wait for Cat to speak before she walked into Cat’s office and made herself comfortable on one of the sofas.

Kara was still facing away from Cat, a clear line of tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier.

“Kiera, as soon as Carter has gone to school, I want you to get me a latte.”

The tension dropped and Kara spun around, a bright smile settling on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course, Ms. Grant.” 

\--

Kara let out a quiet breath as Cat entered her office and closed the door behind her. 

“Who is that?” Carter asked as he pulled out one of the bear claws and tore it in half. He pushed the box closer to Kara.

“That’s Leslie Willis. She does the radio show.”  
  
“Is she in trouble?”   
  
Kara reached for one of the sticky buns and bit straight into it. “Kinda? She’s been making some uh… creative suggestions about the wolf man and your mom doesn’t really like it. Doesn’t really fit in with the CatCo. brand, you know?”

Carter nodded thoughtfully and shot a quick glance into the office, Kara took advantage of the pause to focus her hearing in on the pair.

_“Werewolves and vampires, really?” Cat sighed. “You know I've never interfered with your more… Controversial comments but you’re delving into the realm of pure conspiracy theories here.”_

_“You can’t tell me that it doesn’t make some kind of sense?” Leslie protested. “Nobody is talking about it and what about that guy who called in yesterday?”_

“I get it.” Carter nodded. “Truth and fact.”  
  
“Precisely.” Kara nodded. “Your mom built this company on unearthing the truth.”

_”- I had a reporter track down this supposed ‘vampire victim’. You know what happened? A bar fight, Leslie. Because you didn’t fact check your source before you let him talk on air, I had to send a reporter to chase a dead end. All you did was waste both my time and his.”_

Kara knew that Alex and Lucy had been to the hospital to talk to the victim, but with everything that had gone on that night with Lucy’s dad and the vampire, Kara realised she hadn’t actually asked them about the cover story.

“What’s your favourite kind of coffee?” Carter asked suddenly, throwing Kara completely off, pulling her focus completely from the conversation happening a few feet away from them.   
  
She turned to face him and smiled, though made no attempt to hide her confusion. “Spiced pumpkin with extra foam and cinnamon on top, why?”

He laughed. “That is such a you order.”  
  
“Thank you? I think? What can I say, I love sweet things.” She punctuated her statement by inhaling the rest of her first sticky bun.

They both looked over as Leslie got to her feet and began to walk around Cat’s office, arms gesturing slightly as she spoke. Cat for her part, hadn’t moved from her perch in front of her desk, but Kara could see the tension in her arms and shoulders.

_Leslie all but snarled. “You can’t censor me like this, Cat. You can’t just put me in the basement, forget about me and then drag me up here to tell me how to do my job.” Leslie gestured vaguely behind her to where Kara and Carter were sitting. “I’m not your lapdog assistant, so don’t treat me like it.”_   
  
Kara grimaced, and tried to cover it behind a cough as Carter flashed her a curious look. Luckily the pair were talking in quiet enough tones that there was no way that Carter could hear what was being said.

Kara briefly wondered if that was intentional, that despite Leslie's intimidating nature she was keeping her voice down for Carter's sake.

But Cat looked _angry._ Kara could hear Cat’s heart spike and even watched as her hands slowly curled into fists against her desk for a few moments before unfurling them.

“I don’t think it’s going well.” Carter frowned.   
  
“Me either, buddy.” Kara agreed.

He sighed and stood reluctantly, he grabbed a napkin from the box and placed another sticky bun and a bear claw on there. “I better go to school.” He cast another glance over at the office. “I don’t really want to hear yelling. They both seem really angry.”   
  
Kara rose to her feet, it was pointless as Cat's elevator was all but five feet away from them, but it felt important nonetheless. 

_“First of all.” Cat began, her voice deceptively light. “As you work under the CatCo. brand and because i’m your boss, I can do exactly that.”_

Kara glanced over as Carter stepped into the elevator as Cat pushed off of her desk and began the slow walk around to her seat.

“I’ll see you soon Kara.” Carter smiled.

“Of course, have a good day at school.”  
  
“I will, thank you.”   
  
_“You are talented, but you need to remember the values we follow here. We do not make outlandish conclusions without fact nor will I accept you talking about my assistant in that way. This is your first and only chance, reign. It. in.”_

_“You-”_   
  
_“You have a show to begin, if i’m not mistaken.” Cat cut her off and reached for her glasses and a pen. “I don’t accept tardiness Leslie so chop chop.”_

As scathing as dismissals go, that was pretty tame for Cat. As Leslie began to storm out of Cat’s office, Kara gathered her things ready to head down to Noonans, only to look up as Leslie glared at her.

Kara was ninety percent sure that she had never spoken to the other woman before in her life, but if looks could kill, she knew she’d be dead ten times over by now. 

She was definitely taking the stairs, no way Kara was risking sharing an elevator with Leslie.

  
  


\--  
  
  


Cat watched Kara leave a few moments after Leslie and sat back in her seat.

The conversation had gone pretty much exactly how Cat thought it would and she had met plenty of people like Leslie in the past to know that things could go one of two ways.

Either Leslie would listen, dial back on the supernatural conspiracy theories and go back to her semi controversial bitching about people in positions of power.

Or she’d double down as a great big ‘fuck you’ to Cat, almost like a challenge for trying to tell her how to run her station and well, Cat knew which of the two options were most likely to play out.

Cat typed out a quick email to Pam in HR, as much as she didn’t want to use it, there was no harm in being prepared. Cat was a good judge of character and she wasn’t often wrong, so it felt like the right move.

Cat would be in her conference during Leslie’s show, so once she sent her email, she noticed she had two new messages from Carter, but sent Kara a quick message instructing her to listen to it while she worked.

Cat opened up Carter’s messages and frowned as she read the first one before rolling her eyes at the second message.

_Spiced pumpkin, extra foam, cinnamon sprinkled on top._

_...Kara’s coffee order._

\--

“Oh this is bad. This is so bad.” Kara groaned into her hands. “It’s bad right?”

Winn nodded slowly and looked over Kara to glance at Cat in her office. “This is so bad.” he hissed.

“Maybe she’s just… Getting it out of her system?” Kara asked.

Once Kara had filled Winn in on Cat’s conversation with Leslie, he had been quick to pull out his earphones to join Kara in listening to Leslie, in Winn’s words ‘burn down her ship’.

So far, he hadn’t been wrong.

“Kara, she opened the show by playing Back off Bitch, that’s not even a good Guns N’ Roses song. She may as well just… Dedicated it to Cat by name.”

Kara groaned again. “Cat’s gonna fire her, Cat’s gonna fire her and they’re going to yell and I’m going to have to be there and Leslie is going to glare at me like it’s _my_ fault.”

_“Now, over the last few days, myself and a lot of my listeners have been speaking about other possible forces in this city. Now I've come under fire myself for talking about this, apparently talking about whether things like vampires exist is too outlandish for the 'brand'.”_

Kara shot Winn a worried look. She was almost glad that Cat had back to back meetings today because she was far too exhausted to handle this mess. 

Her arm still ached and all Kara wanted to do was go home and sleep for twelve hours.

_“But vampires or not, I think everybody can agree that in every workplace… There’s a witch. So this next song goes out to the biggest witch of them all. This is ‘Burn the Witch’ by Radiohead.”_ _  
_ _  
_ “Oh god.” Kara dropped her head to her desk. “This is a nightmare, that’s it. Alex didn’t get all the venom out of my arm and I'm just having a very specific fever dream.” 

“Last time I checked, vampire venom doesn’t make you dream about the disk jockey waging war against your boss.” Winn replied.

‘We don’t know!” Kara pointed at him. “As far as we’re concerned it can do anything.”  
  
“What was it like fighting a vampire?” Winn asked, pulling out his earphones and wheeling closer to Kara. 

“He was newly turned, he threw me out of a window.” Kara replied quietly. “He threw a motorcycle at Lucy and Vasquez but I totally caught it.”  
  
“Badass.” Winn nodded appreciatively. “What about all that drama with the General and his kid?”   
  
“Lucy got rid of him, she’s on our side. Alex said she’ll call me when they know it’s all taken care of but I had to leave to get ready for work.”

Winn frowned. “You haven’t been to sleep yet?”  
  
“Nope.” Kara sighed. “I miss my bed. It’s probably why this hasn’t healed yet.” She rubbed at the space on her arm where the bandage lay. 

She pulled up a word document and began typing up the notes she’d scribbled so far during Leslie’s show, wondering how much of a priority it would be to Cat. 

“But Lucy is nice, I like her, Alex not so much though. Did you know she’s Lois’s sister?”  
  
“As in… Your cousin's fiancé?”   
  
Kara nodded. “She hasn’t mentioned it herself, but Clark gave me a copy of Lois’s book for Christmas last year-”   
  
“That’s such a lame gift.” Winn interrupted. 

“He panicked.” Kara shrugged. “Anyway, I was flicking through that and it’s definitely the same Lucy, it has to be. How common a last name is Lane?”

“Do you like… _Like_ her?”

Kara felt the tips of her ears burning and shrugged. “She’s super pretty and a total badass and she seems so nice but…” Kara’s gaze flickered over to Cat’s office and she disguised it with a shake of her head. “But no, just regular like.”

“For now.” Winn sang.

Kara threw a pen at him. “What about you? Anyone on the horizon?”  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Winn shrugged.

Kara heard his heart rate spike. “There’s totally someone.”  
  
It was his turn to turn bright red. “No fair, you have x-ray wolf hearing.”   
  
“None of those words make sense in a sentence.” Kara pointed out. “I won’t push!”   
  
“There’s nothing to push about. As far as I know, the guy is super straight, so until I know otherwise, hopes are staying low.”

Kara sighed and leant back in her seat and sighed. “That’s fair.” 

He mimicked her position. “We’re not good at this dating thing. We can’t even find good crushes.”  
  
“I don’t have a crush.” Kara protested.

“Sure you don’t.”

“I don’t!”

“Whatever you say.”  
  
“I will throw you off of the balcony.”

Their bickering was cut off by Kara’s phone ringing, she grinned at seeing Alex’s name flash on the screen and pointed at Winn.

“Keep listening, if she says anything about Cat, write it down.”

He saluted and put his earphones back in. 

“Hey Alex.” 

_“So, I don’t know how she did it, but the DSO is here to stay. She even got us extra funding?”_ Alex explained, the way her tone got higher towards the end of the sentence made Kara realise that Alex didn’t seem to understand how it happened. 

“Really? That’s good news!” 

_“You should see the report Kara, the President agreed with it all, including you being a Liaison to us.”_

“Does that mean I get a badge?” Kara asked.

_“Don’t push it.”_ _  
_ _  
_ Kara sighed. “It was worth a try.”

_“You do get to be on our payroll though.”_

“Now that I can get on board with.” Kara glanced over at Winn who was visibly grimacing at something he could hear on the radio show. “Alex, I gotta go, I’m dealing with the Leslie incident.”  
  
 _“Cat hasn’t fired her?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “She will… Listen to today's show when you get a chance…”   
  
_“I will when I can, I'm going home now to get some sleep.”_

“You still haven’t gone home?” Kara asked.

_“Nope, neither has Lucy. But I think she’s trying to hide here until she knows her dad is on a plane. Oh, we’re going for drinks tonight, you in?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “I shouldn’t, I really need to go home and sleep after work. But i’ll call you later and see how I feel?”   
  
_“Sounds like a plan, love you.”_

“Love you too.” Kara hung up and looked over at Winn. “What did Leslie say?”

\--

“Still here?” J’onn asked.

“Figured I’d make sure everything was in order.” Lucy shrugged. “I’ll head back to the hotel soon.”

Just as soon as she knew that her father had gotten on the plane and was nowhere near the city.

J’onn gave her a knowing look, but didn’t say anything more on the matter. He walked around and took a seat. 

“I promise you can have your office back considering you’re technically my boss now.” Lucy said. “I also promise I didn’t change your filing methods.”

“I’ll take your word on that. Did you file your request for your service weapon?”

“Yep, measurements have been sent for the uniform too.”  
  
“You are ahead of the curve.”   
  
“It’s been a long night.” Lucy shrugged.

She was still pretty sure she had a minor concussion and the pain in her shoulder was starting to border on unbearable. There was only so much work she could do to distract her from it.

J’onn looked at his watch. “I’m going to have a car ready to take you to the hotel in thirty minutes. Everything else can wait.”

“Sir-”

“But I do have these for you.” He continued, setting a phone and tablet down on the desk. “Secure line to the DSO and the tablet contains a database of the supernatural. When you’ve had time to rest it’ll be good for you to give it a read.”  
  
And now she had homework? Fucking hell.

“Will do, Sir.”

She’d rather just quiz Kara on everything she knew, but this would be a good backup too.

\--

When Cat finished her conference call an hour later, the first thing she noticed was the small gathering that seemed to be happening at Kara’s desk.

While it was never surprising to see the IT Hobbit lurking - his desk was right next to Kara’s after all, having James Olsen hanging around was a new addition.

Without putting too much thought into _why_ , Cat was on her feet and walking out of her office towards Kara’s desk.

Kara noticed her immediately, gaze shifting from James to watch her approach.

“Cool, so i’ll see you guys tomorrow then?” James asked, at Winn and Kara’s nods he pulled himself up from Kara’s desk and turned to leave, giving Cat a nod and a warm smile as he walked past her.

“Kiera, I don’t pay you to socialise.” Cat scolded.

“Of course Ms. Grant.” Kara smiled. “I was just about to send you the uh… Summary of Leslie’s show. But I think you might need another latte before you look at it.”  
  
“Bold assumption.” Cat noted, relishing in Kara adjusting her glasses in a flustered moment. “That bad?”   
  
Kara glanced over at Winn before meeting Cat’s gaze once more. “I mean… She only name dropped you once? But…”   
  
So, bad then.

“Fine, fine.” Cat sighed. “Go on, shoo, and get yourself something before you drop dead in my building. Honestly, do you even sleep?”

Because while it had been noticeable when she first stepped into the office, now it was obvious that Kara was exhausted. The bags under her eyes would be a struggle to hide even with all of the products Cat had at her disposal. 

It made Cat wonder what was going on that was affecting Kara so much, she was hardly a party girl type so she felt comfortable ruling that out as an option.

Kara nodded, clicking a few keys on her computer before getting to her feet. “Is there anything else you’d like?”  
  
“No, just the latte. Did you send it?” Cat asked.

“You should get it any minute now.” Kara grinned. “I’ll be back soon.”

\--

As the day was coming to its end, Kara was beyond ready to go home. She had already sent a text to Alex to let her know there was no chance she’d come out tonight, but had encouraged her to go (and to try not to threaten Lucy) in the meantime.

She entered Cat’s office, advil in hand. Cat didn’t acknowledge her arrival, much more invested in the paperwork on her desk. Kara set them down on the table and went about pouring Cat a glass of water before the other woman finally spoke up.

“Pam is pushing the paperwork through as fast as she can. Apparently they’re rather overwhelmed down there at the moment, but she’s aiming to get it to me tomorrow morning. As soon as it comes through have Leslie come up to my office.”  
  
“Of course, Ms. Grant.” Kara nodded. She set the glass down beside Cat. 

“I’ve decided to offer Brad the sports editor role, he hasn’t been terrible since he took over so I need you to call these people tomorrow,” She held out a handful of resumes. “and offer them interviews for assistant editor.”

Kara had barely reached out to take the papers from Cat when the other woman's gaze dropped down to her arm and before Kara had a chance to figure out what was happening, Cat’s hand was circling around her wrist, almost too gently despite the sudden sense of urgency.

“You’re bleeding.” 

Kara’s gaze dropped to her arm, and surely enough there was a slow but steady stain spreading across her cardigan and wow, how had she not even noticed that because now that she was looking at it, it just _itched._

“It’s nothing.” Kara tried to pull her arm free but Cat refused to release her. “Honestly Ms. Grant, it’s fine.” 

“Sofa. Now.” 

There was no room for arguments when Cat’s tone got that low and her grip on Kara’s wrist loosened enough for Kara to pull herself free and all but scurry over to the sofa and sit down.

Kara watched as Cat got up and moved around her office, apparently in search of the first aid kit. She dropped her gaze to her wrist where Kara was certain she could still feel the burn of Cat’s touch against her skin.

Cat sat beside her, setting the first aid kit down on the coffee table and clicking it open, rummaging through it for a few moments before she fixed Kara with a glare. Or at least it was Cat’s best attempt at a glare, even Kara could admit that the effect was dimmed considerably by the concern in her eyes which was a surreal experience in itself.

“Honestly Kiera, I don’t understand your attachment to these god awful cardigans, but you realise that you’re going to need to take it off right?” 

Kara was too busy trying to think of excuses to reply, by the time she had left the DSO the bite had healed considerably, it didn’t _look_ like a bite anymore but that didn’t make it any easier for her to think of a way to explain the injury away should Cat ask.

And Cat _would_ ask. That much was clear.

Kara shrugged off her cardigan and set about rolling up her sleeve of her shirt, trying not to visibly grimace at the bloodsoaked material.

Yeah, there was no saving this shirt. Getting blood out of white? Not a chance.

“Jesus, what have you been doing?” Cat asked, reaching for Kara’s arm.

Kara pulled back and started to remove the bandage, her fingers came away bloody and the last thing she wanted was for Cat, or god forbid her sofa, to get bloody.

With the bandage off, the wound was clear to see despite the streaks of blood, both fresh and dry. It looked like two relatively neat puncture wounds and Cat was quick to grab her wrist again and begin to wipe the area with antiseptic.   
  
Kara was too thrown off by Cat’s forwardness to react to the burn.

“I uh, went for a run last night and I tripp- fell! Onto a fence. Yep. Uh, tripped on a motorcycle, and fell. Onto a fence.”

It was only half a lie, to be fair.

Cat’s brow furrowed and Kara didn’t dare take her eyes off of the other woman as she seemed to focus entirely on Kara’s arm.

The silence between them was bordering on painful and Kara was just thankful that people had begun to leave for the day because she could only imagine how the pair of them must look at the moment.

“Honestly Ms. Grant, you don’t have to do this, I can-” Kara tried.

“I don’t have to do anything, of course. But you seem to be the clumsiest woman i’ve ever met. I wouldn’t be surprised if you managed to injure yourself trying to put it on.” The corner of Cat’s lips quirked upwards as she reached for a bandage from the kit.

Now Cat was teasing her? Things just kept getting weirder.

“Honestly, who falls on a fence? I hope you have your tetanus shot.”  
  
The delicacy in which Cat wrapped the bandage around her injury was disarming and part of Kara wished that she could explain to Cat how unnecessary it was, that by this time tomorrow it was very likely that the mark would be entirely healed. But that would mean opening a whole other can of worms.

If Cat found out what she was, well, Kara couldn’t bear to think about the ramifications of that. Cat was a seeker of truth and if Kara dropped the knowledge of the supernatural in her lap, Cat would run with it. 

It was too dangerous, for Kara, for every other person in the world hiding their nature, hell. For Cat herself. 

Besides, as unnerving as it was being on the receiving end of genuine care and concern from Cat, Kara couldn’t deny that it was _nice._

“Don’t worry Ms. Grant, I’ve had all my shots.” Kara replied eventually.

Cat secured the bandage in place and dropped her arm with a flourish, rising to her feet and making her way back to her desk. Kara took the moment to focus on Cat’s heartbeat, noting it was only a few beats faster than normal.

“Yes well, try not to get it infected. I can’t afford to find another assistant at the moment.”  
  
Kara set about cleaning up the mess left behind and smiled. “Of course not, anything else?”   
  
“Call my driver and have him pick me up in thirty minutes, then you can go home.” 

“Are you sure?” Kara asked, staring at Cat.   
  
The woman didn’t look up from her iPad, but she did wave her free hand. “Yes yes, there’s nothing further for you to do today.” 

Kara’s bed was calling to her, she absolutely wasn’t going to complain.

“Of course, have a good night, Ms. Grant.”

\--

“So Kara is officially dead to the world.” Alex declared as she dropped down into the booth opposite Lucy.

“Is she okay?” Lucy asked, she pushed a glass towards Alex. “I took a guess at whiskey on the rocks?”

“Top shelf?”  
  
Lucy grinned. “Of course, I said I'd be buying, didn't i?” 

Alex could get used to this, it certainly helped that Lucy showed a clear concern about Kara too.

“She’s fine, by the way. Just wiped out, turns out she went straight to work instead of sleeping.” Alex gestured vaguely. “Then her arm started bleeding and her boss saw, it was a whole deal.”

Lucy sipped her drink and nodded thoughtfully. “I might drop by and see her tomorrow, if that’s okay with you?”

“You don’t exactly strike me as the type to ask permission.” Alex pointed out, Lucy shrugged and smiled into her drink. “But go for it, I think Kara would like that.”  
  
“Okay cool, because I would be lying if I didn’t want to use this as a chance to see Cat Grant in the flesh.” Lucy said appreciatively. 

Alex narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “Was I the only one growing up who wasn’t completely infatuated with that woman?”

Lucy threw the rest of her drink back and laughed. “Listen, in a dream world I would absolutely be her trophy wife.” Then she seemed to catch onto Alex’s words and practically leant across the table to look at Alex. “You _don’t_ have a crush on her?”

“She works Kara to the bone, fires anyone who pisses her off and seems like an all around ice queen.”  
  
“But she’s so hot.” Lucy whined. “Surely she can’t be that bad if Kara likes to work for her?”

“Kara’s had a hero crush on her for years, plus she sees the good in everyone, with few exceptions.”   
  
Alex didn’t need to specify that she was talking about General Lane, Lucy seemed to pick that up herself very clearly.

Lucy fidgeted with the rim of her glass, nodding thoughtfully. “I am surprised that you agreed to do this, especially without her here.”  
  
Alex relaxed back into her seat and sighed. “I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t trust you, hell, I'd be lying if I said I trusted you now. But you really came through for us, you got the DSO more funding, you protected Kara and you’ve thrown your career and life aside to join us. I’d be a massive asshole if I didn’t take all that on board.”   
  
Lucy caught the waiters eye and held up two fingers, he nodded and headed towards the bar as she pushed a hand through her hair. “I get that. But hey, we work well together and hopefully one day you’ll trust me properly.”   
  
“Keep the drinks coming and you’ll be on the right track.”   
  
“Now that, I can do.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Leslie had been in Cat's office for less than ten minutes before people started to realise what was happening. 

Kara wasn't sure if it was an act of kindness that Cat had waited until after Leslie finished her show to fire her or if she wanted to send some kind of message to everyone. 

Or maybe she needed a few lattes before she dealt with it, Kara had already resigned herself to never knowing the truth. 

What she did know was that the click of keys and phone calls seemed to stop the moment Leslie's voice started raising. 

Cat, for her part, was surprisingly quiet. Her body language screamed anger and Kara could hear it in her tone as she spoke. Kara had to admire the woman's hold over her emotions. 

Especially considering the words Leslie was currently using to describe Cat, Kara could feel the prickle of anger herself on Cat's behalf. 

"Do you think I should call security?" Kara asked. 

"Pretty sure you could drag her out yourself if it came to it." Winn pointed out. "But nah, I think Cat has this under control." 

Kara didn't answer, instead she kept watching Cat's body language as Leslie essentially called her a dictator to her face. 

Kara kind of wanted to punch her? 

Cat silenced her with a single raised hand and it was a testament to the power she had that Kara could _hear_ several people watching collectively hold their breath. 

It was so silent that super hearing wasn't needed to hear Cat's response.

"You had your chance, Leslie. Instead of taking my advice on board you threw it in my face and slandered me on your show." Cat spoke clearly. "You have until the end of the day to clear out your studio."

And while Cat hadn't yelled, her voice was steady and cold and there was something about that tone that reverberated down Kara's spine. 

She caught movement from the corner of her eye and turned her head to see Lucy approaching and that threw her entirely. For a moment, she didn't register that Leslie was storming out until she pushed the door open with so much force it was a surprise that the glass didn't shatter. 

If Kara had learned anything from working with Cat in the last two years, it's to recognise when someone is about to start a scene. 

Leslie hadn't even opened her mouth before Kara was at her side. 

"Please don't yell, otherwise I'll have to get security." Kara said and she could only wish that she could hold the same level of authority in her voice that Cat could. 

Leslie scoffed. "There's nothing to yell about that everybody in this room doesn't already know."

"I get that you're upset, but that didn't give you the right to talk about her that way on your show." Kara replied. "Ms. Grant has worked so hard to get to where she is now. She's a good person, she didn't deserve that." 

"And I deserved to be fired? Because I sought alternative theories to the shit happening out there?" Leslie asked. 

Kara was silent for a few moments because ultimately, part of her knew Leslie had a point. Yes, the way she went about it was wrong and it was ultimately her behaviour towards Cat that led to this happening. But her theories were still right. 

She had done what Cat strived to when she decided to become a journalist. Leslie had looked for the truth and it was purely down to Kara and the DSO's meddling that made her look like another conspiracy theorist. 

Kara shook the thoughts away before they could snowball into the guilt she’d been trying to ignore. 

"You and I both know that wasn't the reason you were fired." Kara managed to reply. 

"I—" 

“Oh, for God's sake, just go start a podcast.” Lucy dismissed as she reached the pair, ignoring the look of pure anger on Leslie's face as she walked over to Kara's desk.

Kara was genuinely curious as to how Lucy could make that phrase sound like such a scathing insult.

She didn't have time to dwell on that thought because then Leslie was stepping closer into her space and surprising Kara further by dropping her voice. 

"Take a good look at me, cause I used to be like you,” Leslie sneered. “Worshiped the ground Cat walked on. Followed her around like a lost little puppy, cherishing the moments she praised me. Then she hid me away in the basement and moved onto other projects." Leslie pointedly looked Kara up and down. "As soon as you stop being interesting, she'll send you away." 

Her words rested heavily in Kara's chest and with it came a fresh burst of anxiety. 

"I think you should leave now." Kara managed to get out and it was only by the grace of whatever higher being there is that her voice didn't shake. 

With a parting smile that bordered on purely threatening, Leslie turned on her heel and headed towards the elevator.

Kara took a moment to drop her gaze to the floor, resting her hands on her hips as she tried to centre herself and focus her breathing. 

Then, she remembered the fact that Lucy was behind her and spun around to find Lucy sat on the edge of her desk, ignoring the curious glances of Winn and a few others. 

"Is everything okay? Did something happen?" 

"Huh? Oh yeah, everything is fine, I just wanted to drop by and say hey." Lucy explained with a shrug. 

Kara nodded and walked back around her desk to sit down with a sigh.

"Who was that chick by the way?" Lucy asked. 

"What? That was Leslie, the radio show host?" 

Lucy looked confused. "Okay?" 

"You didn't know?" 

"Why would I know? I walked into her throwing a bitch fit at you and ranting about being fired." 

Kara frowned as she stared at the woman. "But you told her to start a podcast?"

"Yeah?" 

"So you just… make it a habit to tell people to start a podcast?" 

"It's a weirdly effective insult." 

Kara nodded. She definitely couldn't argue with that. 

“How’s your shoulder?” Kara asked instead.

“It hurts, but I can handle it.”   
  
Kara frowned and didn’t hesitate to reach out and press her fingers to the back of Lucy’s wrist. She took a moment to focus on Lucy and drew the pain inwards. It was something Kara had done several times before and if Kara hadn’t been wearing a cardigan, Lucy would have seen the veins underneath Kara’s skin darken and turn black.

It hurt. 

The pain radiated through her arm and burned through her shoulder.

“What the fuck?” Lucy asked quietly.

Kara pulled her hand away and rolled her shoulder experimentally. “I took your pain, it should help, for a while at least.”  
  
“How? I- Is there anything you can’t do?”   
  
“I can’t fly. At least, I don’t think so?”

Lucy opened her mouth to speak but clamped it shut when she noticed Cat stepping out of her office. 

It did briefly occur to Kara that over the last few days, Cat had been coming out of her office to come directly to Kara as opposed to yelling for her, but before she could think of reasons why, Kara was distracted by the very brief but very genuine look of genuine awe that Lucy directed at Cat. 

"Kiera, how many times do I have to come out here to break up social gatherings at your desk?" She asked, trailing off to give Lucy a long look up and down. "You don't work for me." 

"That I do not." Lucy agreed. "And I'm sorry for distracting your assistant but let me just say, it's a genuine pleasure to meet you in person, Cat." 

Kara watched Cat raise an eyebrow, no doubt thrown by Lucy's willingness to call her by her name rather than her title. 

"And you are?" 

"Lucy Lane." Lucy held her hand out only to drop it when Cat showed no signs of accepting. 

In all her time as Cat's assistant, Kara had never seen her boss so surprised. But in this moment there was a brief second where Cat could only be described as seeing a ghost. 

"Lane? As in Lois Lane's baby sister?" Cat asked, flashing Kara a look that almost bordered on betrayal. 

Lucy shoved her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and grinned. "Unfortunately. Don't hold that against me though." 

Trust Cat to get the confirmation of Lucy’s sister within the first thirty seconds of their conversation.

"Not a fan?" Cat asked.

"Absolutely not. We haven't spoken for a while." 

Cat hummed thoughtfully and gave Lucy another appraising once over. "Her autobiography suggested otherwise, I wonder how much else was exaggerated." 

"I'm sure between us we have plenty of stories." 

"Well, you certainly got the looks." Cat said. 

"Coming from you, that's a big compliment." Lucy took a step closer and gave Cat an admiring look. "Those red carpet photos have nothing on seeing you in the flesh." 

Kara could only stare at the two women in front of her. Was Lucy flirting? It definitely felt like flirting. 

And was Kara feeling jealous as she watched Cat genuinely laugh at Lucy's work? No. 

Absolutely not. 

That would be ridiculous. 

"And how do you know Kiera?" Cat asked. 

Lucy raised an eyebrow at the incorrect name and flashed Kara a look that suggested she would be asking about that later. 

"Oh, we met last week." Lucy shrugged but didn't elaborate further. "I was hoping she'd be willing to help me look for apartments considering I've got a job here now." 

Lucy punctuated her statement with a wink at Kara and Kara was certain she caught a dark look flash over Cat's face, no matter how quickly it passed. 

Lucy looked thoughtfully between them before she continued. "But obviously I don't want to steal her away from you while she's working so I'm going to go explore the neighbourhood a bit." 

Lucy made a point of walking back over to Kara's desk and pulling the pen from Kara's hand to scribble something down on a post-it note. 

"Call me when you can, maybe we can catch up for lunch?" Lucy asked. 

Kara nodded. "Sure. Yes. That is a plan." 

"Wonderful." Lucy grinned, her eyes were sparkling and Kara had no idea what to make of this entire situation, it was definitely an emotional whiplash from her mini confrontation with Leslie. "I'll see you later, Cat. It was a genuine pleasure." 

Cat hummed but narrowed her eyes as Lucy walked away. 

There was a terrifying moment of silence where all Kara could do was listen to Cat's heartbeat and wonder when and why it had spiked before Cat turned back to Kara. 

"Leslie's paperwork is on my desk. Take it down to Pam." 

Kara almost tripped over her chair in her effort to get up as fast as she could. "Of course, Ms. Grant." 

  
  


\--

  
  


Sam closed the door to his office and locked it behind him, setting his hat down on his desk before dropping into his seat and hitting the power button on his computer. Since he’d landed back in D.C, he had to suffer through more meetings than he’d usually have in a week.

As much as it infuriated him, he begrudgingly had to admit that Lucy had done well. Whether it be through favours or just the skill for talking that she had, Lucy had put up red tape at every possible spot.   
  
As far as Sam could tell, he was being thoroughly investigated at the moment, not that he was overly concerned about that part.

There was still one person he had to speak to that he couldn’t put that off any longer. 

He barely had a chance to open his emails before the screen turned to static briefly, a flare of light leaving a white screen in its wake.

_“General, good to see you’ve returned.”_ The disembodied voice greeted. _“How was National City?”_

Sam understood that measures had to be put in place, measures that went beyond simply having a secure line. In their organisation, the power of anonymity was one they refused to sacrifice. 

“They should burn the place to the ground.” Sam replied.

_“And the DSO?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “A group of bleeding hearts.” He shook his head. “My own daughter, siding with that wolf.”

_“Ah yes, from what I've heard they’re taking extreme lengths to hide her identity. Her file contains very little information. Your daughter has talent, General. It’s her loss that she joined them.”_ _  
_ _  
_ Sam sighed again, he was still bitter that Lucy had chosen the wolf over him. Did family mean nothing to that girl? 

If she had helped him take the wolf from the DSO, he would have had her pulled into their ranks, and now, even if she didn’t know it, she made a powerful enemy.

_“General, while it may not be with us, the wolf still remains in government custody whether she knows it or not. A cage is still a cage, even if it has the illusion of freedom of will. Your plan was a success, you should take it as is.”_

“My apologies, but seeing as you no longer have an inside man into the DSO, I can't see this as a victory."

_"Not to worry, our more… Ah, public partners have the situation under control."_

“Public partners?”  
  
 _“Patience, General. We are still lining up the chessboard. All will make sense soon.”_

  
  


\--

“Can you even get drunk?” James asked.

Kara nodded. “It just takes a lot more, like… a lot a lot. Honestly it’s the only way I'm able to keep up with my sister.”  
  
They’d been at the bar pretty much since they all finished work, and while it was awkward as hell at first, having Winn there meant the awkwardness between her and James faded easily enough and had been replaced by James questioning Kara on her abilities.

“How fast can you run?”  
  
“Uh… It’s been years since we tested it but back then it was about twenty five miles per hour? I’m probably faster now though and could definitely do faster if I was shifted.”

“And when you shift, do you look like that wolf from the docks?”   
  
Kara scratched behind her ear and glanced down quickly at the table. “Kind of? It can vary from wolf to wolf. There’s different aspects to it, too. So, a werewolf like the one from the docks would have the standard ‘looks mostly human but with bits of fur and more aggressive features’ and the big standing form. But a werewolf that comes from a family of wolves would have the ability to shift more into a complete wolf, four legs and all that.”   
  
“So like a regular wolf, just bigger.” Winn added.

James nodded thoughtfully and took a sip from his drink. “Which one do you fall into?”  
  
“Most of my family were werewolves.” Kara sighed. “But, it doesn’t matter. I don’t shift.”   
  
Winn flashed her an apologetic look and for a painful moment, Kara was sure James was going to ask about Kara’s family in more detail. She wondered how much Clark had told him.

But there was a flash of something on James’s face, almost knocking his drink over as he made a gesture with his hand.

“Oh shit, Clark? Is Clark a werewolf?” He asked.

Kara couldn’t help the surprised laugh. “No, his mom was human? I don’t know how the whole genetics thing works, Alex is the one to ask about that.”   
  
“Silver lining though dude,” Winn began before James could have the chance to ask another question. “You found out in a much cooler way.”   
  
James raised an eyebrow and twisted in his seat to look directly at Winn, throwing an arm over the back of the chair as he relaxed. Kara tilted her head at Winn as she heard his heart rate speed up.

“Oh? So how did you get the reveal?”

Winn glanced at Kara and laughed. “Okay so, it was about six months ago, Cat sent me down to the server room to fix an issue and sent Kara with me so she could get updates. So I'm up to my neck in wires and stuff, flashlight in my mouth and Kara being Kara, tripped over and knocked her glasses off her face. I look over and she’s floundering.”  
  
“I was not floundering!”   
  
“You kinda were.” Winn shot back. “She made an excuse about Cat needing her and leaves, just like that. The next day, she takes me into our secret office and sits me down. Says she needs to talk to me about something really important and just… Takes her glasses off, turns her eyes gold and tells me she’s a werewolf.”   
  
Kara could feel the embarrassment resurface as he told the story and hid her face in her hands as James glanced over at her.

“Not going to lie, totally threw me for a few minutes.”

James looked between, equal parts amused and confused.  
  
Kara groaned into her hands. “Have you ever seen a cat's eyes in the dark? That green glow they do? Mine do that too. My glasses have a filter over the lens, it hides that eyeshine. Otherwise things like flashlights or security cameras make it clear I'm not human.” 

“So when you knocked your glasses off, Winn’s flashlight made your eyes do the thing?” James asked.

“Well, that’s the thing. I hadn’t actually _seen_ that happen, but she told me because she was under the impression that I had.”   
  
James threw his head back and laughed. “Jesus, what did you think she was pulling you into the office for?”   
  
“He thought I was going to tell him I was gay.” Kara sighed. “So I ended up telling him I was a werewolf and bi in one go.”   
  
“A very wholesome bonding experience, all things considered.” Winn added.

“You’re bi? Me too.” James grinned.

Winn’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull, Kara had to admit she was proud of herself for keeping a straight face.

“Me three.” Winn replied. “Hey, we’re like the three musketeers of bisexuality.”  
  
“Well, cheers to that I guess.” James held up his drink.

Kara was all too happy to drink to that. 

“Can we get chicken wings?” She asked. “Another fun fact about werewolves: I need to eat. Like, a lot.”  
  
  


\--

When Leslie told Sunny Danvers that she'd been hidden away in the basement, she hadn't really meant it quite so literally. 

And yet here she was, legs kicked up on her desk as she drank from the bottle of whiskey she'd always had stashed at 10pm.

Cat had said to be out by the end of the day. If her questionable choice in security guards couldn't keep track of people's whereabouts well, that wasn't Leslie's problem. 

And fuck, this shitty little basement had become a second home to Leslie over the last couple of years. 

Part of her wasn't ready to let go. 

The rest of her?

Well, the rest of her was really fucking angry. 

So, fuck Cat Grant. 

Fuck CatCo. 

\--

"Okay okay okay." Winn slapped his hand against the table, his and James's glasses shaking dangerously. "So demons totally exist too right? Big scary…" he mimicked horns with his fingers against his forehead. 

Kara nodded slowly. "Again, yes but no, I have never seen one. They tend to do their own thing unless summoned and bound to a human." 

"What about the whole deal with trying to end the world?" Winn asked. 

James raised an eyebrow. "I think it's clear by now that the movies aren't super accurate. Vampires don't sparkle either dude." 

Kara laughed. "What would be gained from ending the world? So many demons feed on things humans offer, emotions, chaos… Vengeance… They need humans for some sense of normality." 

She sat back and finished her drink with a sigh. 

"If I've learned anything about living in the shadows, is that it's the humans you should be more concerned about than anyone supernatural.”

Winn and James quieted before moving onto a debate about ghosts and demons. Kara closed her eyes for a moment and started to filter through the various sounds, past the friends arguing quietly at the bar, the couple making out in the bathroom, the bouncer out front warning someone from entering, a thud and a yelp of pain coming from somewhere behind the building… 

Kara bolted upright and focused on the sound. 

_"Don't fucking move."_ A deep voice warned. 

"Kara—" James began. 

Kara waved him off and scrambled from her seat and gestured towards Winn. "Give me your hoody, now!"

_"Don't test me, you think I don't know how to use this?"_

There was a click that Kara was all too familiar with, a gun being cocked and Kara was snatching the hoodie from Winn's hands and heading straight towards the fire exit at the back of the bar. Kara threw herself through it and turned her head to pinpoint the origin of the sound. 

_"Please, please don't hurt me, I don't have any money."_ From the voice alone, Kara could tell they were young. 

She pulled the hood over her head, shoved her glasses into her pocket and took off down the alley. 

_"Then give me your fucking phone, watch, anything you've got kid."_

Kara broke into a sprint, rounding a corner and spotted the pair. A boy pinned to the wall—that couldn't be much younger than herself—and the man waving a pistol in the air. The fear she could sense from the boy was more than she could stomach. 

The attacker hadn't noticed her yet and she watched as he stepped back, gun loosely trained on the boy as he rummaged through his pockets. 

Kara took a breath to steady herself before sprinting again. 

Alex had said that during a fight, Kara couldn’t rely purely on her speed and strength to win. That simply tackling someone like a football player just wasn't enough. 

Well, if she could almost knock Lucy and Vasquez out by being launched through the air by a vampire, then it was definitely worth trying. 

Though Kara did have to wonder how it all must look from the boys perspective. 

One moment, staring down a hooded man pointing a gun at him, only to have _another_ hooded figure barrel into him and the pair disappearing from view in a blur. 

Kara heard a crack as they collapsed to the ground followed by a yelp of pain from the assailant. Part of her felt bad as she'd clearly broken something, but protecting the kid took priority. 

She pulled back and threw a quick right hook, connecting with his jaw and knocking him out before he could grab the gun once more. 

Kara stood up and kicked the gun away, planting her hands on her hips to drop her head and take a shaky breath. 

"Are you okay?" She asked, turning to face the boy. 

He stared at her with wide eyes, speechless and nodded. 

"Did he hurt you?" 

"No, no I'm fine, is he dead?" He asked. 

Kara shook her head. "Just unconscious. Look, there's a bouncer outside a bar close to here, you'll be safe with him until the police get here, do you have someone to call?" 

She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb and took a step as she spoke, relieved when he started to walk towards her. 

Kara was more relieved that he kept his distance. Didn't have to worry about him trying to pick out her features. 

They reached the mouth of the alley and Kara gestured to the bar where only ten minutes ago, she had been enjoying drinks with her friends. 

"Right there, make sure you call the cops too okay? That guy might be out for a little while but I don't want to risk him waking up and going after someone else." Kara explained. 

The boy frowned. "You're not coming?" 

"Gotta go." Kara shrugged. "Places to save, people to see." 

She immediately grimaced, wishing, not for the first time, that she was better at speaking, to be able to be suave and witty before slipping into the shadows. 

Nope. Apparently Kara was cursed to stumble over her words for all eternity. 

The boy frowned but didn't comment on it, he glanced down the alley and let out a shaky breath of his own. 

"Thank you, for saving me. I don't know how I'll ever repay you." 

Kara smiled. "Don't worry about it, just stay safe, okay?" 

"Can I ask you something completely weird?" 

"Sure?" 

"Where did you get your contacts?" 

Kara frowned. "My-my contacts?" 

He nodded eagerly. "I've never seen any that gold before." 

Kara was already taking two steps back. "Amazon… Gotta go, bye!" 

She turned and sprinted back down the alley, careful to keep her speed to human limits.

Kara felt like an idiot. She'd been so wrapped up in the moment that she hadn't realised she'd slipped. 

When she stopped, she pulled out her phone to call Winn and James, only to pause at the gold eyes staring back at her.

She was getting too familiar with the adrenaline rush that it felt like a natural response now. 

Sighing, Kara clicked on Winn’s name and pressed the phone to her ear. 

\--  
  


Leslie poured the rest of the contents of her bottle over the equipment, smiling to herself as it began to spark. The crackle of electricity was music to her ears. 

Even if the cost to repair was basically pennies to Cat, the inconvenience of it all was worth it. After destroying her pride and joy, it was the least Cat deserved.

Once the bottle was empty, she gripped the handle and thrust the base of the bottle through the screen of the closest monitor. 

The subsequent flash of light and burst of pain was intense enough that for Leslie, everything turned to black. 

\--

"She's not coming back is she?" James asked as Winn slipped his phone back into his pocket. 

"Nope, turns out she heard a mugging happening. She stopped it, everything’s fine but she had a little…" Winn trailed off and gestured to his eyes. "Incident. She figured it was best to put some distance between herself and here."

"Damn, that sucks, we were having a good time too." 

Winn's answering grin was enough to make James smile. 

"She did say we should stick around for another drink. Next time, drinks are definitely on her." Winn replied. 

"Well, I'm not opposed to another round. How are you at pool?" 

"Terrible. Wanna play?" 

James laughed. "Don't worry, I'll go easy on you." 

  
  


\--

Leslie woke to darkness. 

Glass littered the floor around her and she pushed herself up slowly. 

There was a strange absence of pain, in its place, she could feel her skin tingle, a thrum of energy coursing through her body. 

She could feel her heart hammering against her chest and Leslie felt more alive than she ever had before, like a switch had been flipped somewhere within her body. 

The door to the studio cracked open, a beam from a flashlight shining through. 

"Hello?" A voice called, stepping into the darkness. 

Leslie recognised it as one of the security guards. She often crossed paths with him when she'd come in early for work. 

She kept low, the desk shielding her from his flashlight. 

Until he stepped around, stopping right in front of her. 

She threw her hands out. "Wait—" 

Her words died in her throat as a streak of energy burst from her fingers, the cry of pain breaking through the static in the air. 

Leslie was aware of the sound of him hitting the ground, but was too focused on her hands to pay him any attention. 

No, she was much more interested in the tiny sparks arcing across her skin. 

This was certainly a development. 

Not an unwelcome one, either. 

Leslie grinned.   
  


There was definitely potential in this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Podcasters were harmed in the writing of this chapter (honestly I love podcasts, hmu with recommendations)
> 
> A lot more Cat this chapter to make up for the lack of her over the last 3 chapters.
> 
> have a great weekend everyone!


	5. black out nights and tight spaces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cat, Winn and James try to deal with CatCo in the aftermath of Leslie's actions and paths cross.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Numbers" by Daughter

  
Cat had always been an early riser, today was no exception. 

However this time, it wasn't her alarm or a particular unpleasant dream that had brought her to consciousness, but the repetitive chime of her notifications. 

She reached for her phone with one hand and rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the other, frowning at the glimpses of text from her notifications before pulling up the oldest message. 

Cat let out a long sigh. 

Power cut at CatCo. 

Small electrical fire that has been contained and didn't get past the basement. 

Servers are down. 

Security guard in hospital suffering from injuries consistent with electrocution and no memory of the incident.

"Jesus Christ." She muttered to herself. 

The day had barely started and it was already a disaster. 

She clicked through the rest of the messages, realising that they were all just updates regarding the power and system issues. 

Her brain was already brainstorming the ways in which she could deal with it, if she could at least get the servers back up, at least then there could be some level of productivity today. 

But there was definitely no need for the amount of staff they would usually have. 

Cat threw back the covers and typed out a text to Kara, throwing the phone onto the bed before making her way towards the bathroom. 

Just because she was going to have a terrible day because of this, there was no need to put unnecessary people through it, and that extended to Kara. 

She'd conference call the heads of the respective departments shortly, and put together a skeleton crew. 

It was going to be a bad day, that much was certain. 

\--

Kara startled awake as her phone vibrated on her nightstand, wincing at the screen as she took in the time and the fact it was Cat's name she was staring at. 

Rolling onto her back, Kara unlocked her phone to read the message. 

_ Power outage at CatCo. Servers are down, you're not required today.  _

Kara frowned and sat up, hitting call and pressing her phone to her ear as she listened to the rings. 

Cat picked up on the third ring. 

_ "Was I not clear enough?"  _ Cat asked. 

Kara scratched the side of her head. "I mean, you lost me at the 'not required today' part. Not going to lie." 

Cat sighed.  _ "Honestly, do I have to spell it out for you?"  _

"N-no, I'm just confused, if the servers are down and everything, won't it be chaos? Won't you need help?" 

There was a moment of silence between them and Kara was happy enough to just wait it out. 

_ "I'm putting together a skeleton crew, it will be limited until we can get up and running again. Honestly, most people would be thrilled at being given the day off with full pay."  _

Kara could picture the eye roll Cat was probably giving her right now, the thought of it brought a smile to her lips. 

"I just don't want to leave you on what sounds like what's going to be a bad day." 

_ "While I appreciate your concern, Kiera, I'm more than capable of taking care of myself." _

"I've never doubted that, Ms. Grant." Kara replied. 

Cat sighed.  _ "I will ask if you can call the hobbit and have him come in."  _

"Of course. He might be asleep at the moment though." 

Cat hummed and Kara rubbed at her eyes again.

_ "Just have him come in as normal."  _ Cat said eventually. 

"Will do. Thank you Ms. Grant." 

Cat hung up without a goodbye and Kara was left wondering whether she should bother going back to sleep or not. 

Instead, she sent a few texts out, first to Winn, as Cat requested and then another to Alex and Lucy. 

\--

"Do we know what caused it?" Cat asked. 

The basement was beyond repair, the entire thing would need to be gutted. But it was nothing short of a miracle that the damage hadn't been worse, that it had been noticed and called in and help had come before a life had been lost. 

The security guard had suffered from bad injuries, but Cat was thankful that he was alive. She was already making arrangements to have his medical bills quietly paid. 

As for what caused the incident? Well, Cat had one idea in particular. 

But without access to the security footage, her theories would remain to herself for now.

"Not sure yet, ma'am." the firefighter replied, not noticing the slight glare she shot his way at the title. "We’re fairly sure it was vandalism although that wouldn’t explain the power surge that took your systems down. As soon as we know for certain, we'll make sure to inform you. My team is just making sure there is no potential damage to the structure, once I have the all clear you can head up." 

Cat nodded and turned on her heel to make her way back to the lobby, she just wanted to be back in her office before everybody else started to turn up. 

At the very least, Cat knew that it had to be Leslie behind the fire, she just needed the proof.

When her phone chimed with an email, she opened it to see it was from one of her journalists, a subpar writer if she were being honest but he had a knack for having sources everywhere. His ability to get those hard to find stories were the only reasons he had made it as far as he had.  
  


_ Ms. Grant,  _

_ This seems like the lead you've been looking for, I'm reaching out to try and get an interview now.  _

_ Hugh. _

There was a screenshot of a text conversation attached, the name of the sender was blacked out but Cat opened it to read it. 

Cat wasn't that interested in Grant's side of the texts, instead she read over the mystery other half of the conversation over and over. 

_ Yeah, the kid said it was some kind of wannabe hero in a hood.  _

_ Nah, there hasn't been any other 'vigilante' reports but I'll keep you posted.  _

_ One more thing, the kid said they were possibly female and was wearing gold contacts, crazy right?  _

Cat found herself leaning forward in her seat as she read the messages over and over. 

A lead on her hooded hero? 

She was just thankful that she had an unlimited data plan. 

\--

Kara sipped at her coffee as she scrolled through her phone, she couldn't be certain but it felt like Noonans was considerably emptier with the lack of CatCo employees looking for their morning fix. 

After finding out that Kara had the day off Lucy had invited her, and by extension, Alex, to come look at apartments with her. 

Lucy was going to be around a lot more and Kara genuinely wanted to get to know her better so it felt like a good opportunity. 

But Kara wondered what was going on in CatCo. 

She wondered how Cat would react if she turned up now with a latte for her. 

Before Kara could entertain the thought anymore, her phone rang. Winn's name flashed across the screen. 

"Have you got it working yet?" She asked as she answered. 

_ "What? No! I've literally only been here for ten minutes, they’ve only just started letting people go up."  _

"Oh." Kara sighed. "What's up?" 

_ "So…"  _ Winn dragged the word out in a way that Kara had learned to associate with him about to deliver bad news.  _ "That kid you saved last night?"  _

"...Yeah?"

_ "He talked to the cops."  _

Which okay, sure. That's not the end of the world. He was almost mugged at gunpoint and she had told him to. 

_ "About you and your gold ‘contacts’."  _

Ah. Yeah that was much worse, but still not all that surprising. 

"How do you know?" Kara asked. 

_ "Overhead Cat telling James and the other directors, there's someone going to interview the kid now. Cat wants me to find a way to get the servers up so they can at least publish the article online later today."  _

Kara covered her face with the palm of her hand. "Alex is going to kill me." 

"Why is Alex killing you?" Lucy asked, her voice almost startling Kara off of her seat. 

"Ahhh Winn? I gotta go." 

_ "I'll keep you updated, and I want my hoody back!"  _

"You got it, thanks." Kara hung up and set the phone down on the table, turning to face Lucy properly. "Good morning!" 

"Good morning." Lucy smiled back. "Why is Alex going to kill you?" 

Okay, she probably wasn't going to drop this. 

Kara cast her hearing out and once she was satisfied Alex wouldn't be walking into the shop for the next couple minutes, she leant closer in. 

"I went out for drinks last night with Winn and James from work and I kinda… Heard a mugging happening?" 

Lucy nodded along slowly. "And you stopped it?" 

"Yeah… I borrowed Winn's hoody and everything," Kara gestured at the red fabric bundled up and poking out the edge of her bag. "But I kinda lost control a little bit? My eyes shifted." 

Lucy raised an eyebrow at that. "So why is Alex killing you? You stopped a mugging, that’s a good thing right?" 

"Because apparently the kid mentioned his saviour having ‘gold contacts’ in his police report and one of our reporters has an informant and there's probably an article being written as we speak." 

Lucy winced. "Ah. Hence the imminent murder?" 

Kara nodded sadly. 

"Maybe she won't notice! Alex doesn't strike me as the type to have a subscription to CatCo."

"You're suggesting I lie to her?" Kara asked. 

"More like… Omitting the truth? We'll get her day drunk! She's working tonight, she can only do so much." 

"That's a terrible idea." 

"But it's still an idea." Lucy declared proudly. She reached out to give Kara a reassuring pat on the arm. "It'll all be fine!"

\--

Lucy loved being right. 

Also this apartment?  _ Amazing.  _

"No way you can afford this." Alex muttered as they took in the wide open space. 

"Obviously not." Lucy agreed. 

They may be on a secret government payroll, but it was obvious that the outfits the other viewers were wearing cost more than they made in a month. 

"But hey, free mimosas." Lucy held up the glass happily. 

Was it the main reason she wanted to look at this apartment? Yes. 

Did she regret it? Absolutely not. 

"To free mimosas." Alex clinked their glasses. 

Kara bounded up to them, eyes wide. "I'm an idiot." 

"I'm sure you are, but why?" Alex asked. 

Kara's wide eyes expression shifted for the briefest second to glare at Alex before she turned back to Lucy. 

"This is Cat's building!" 

"Well that's enough reason for me to buy this place, imagine the elevator rides." She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. 

Kara's cheeks turned the faintest shade of pink as she looked towards Alex as Lucy drained the rest of her glass. 

Interesting. 

"Kidding, Kara. It's a nice place but all I plan on doing is seeing if I can take one of those bottles of champagne." 

"That's stealing though?" Kara frowned. 

Lucy set her empty glass on the counter and gave Kara's cheek a gentle pat. 

"Eat the rich." 

"Wh… What? Literally?" 

Alex sighed. "No Kara. Go fill your pockets with snacks, Lucy, i swear to god if we get arrested this early in the morning I'm gonna be mad." 

"One, don't underestimate my stealing skills. Two, we've got like three other places to look at before lunch and you two would probably be my one phone call so I can’t afford for us to get arrested together." 

Lucy shrugged off her jacket and folded it neatly over her arm. 

"Now go distract that realtor and I'll steal one for you too." 

"Deal." 

\--

James loved his office, he appreciated the privacy, but he had to admit he kind of liked the appeal of being in the open space of the bullpen.

Though James felt like a part of this sudden appreciation was partly down to the fact that he had temporarily commandeered Kara's desk for the day. 

Watching Winn work was fascinating, even if he had no idea what it was Winn was actually doing. Just that it involved a lot of typing and muttered curses under his breath. 

It also meant that he could monitor the Hugh situation, the reporter in question had already come and gone and Cat had personally taken his article to proof read. 

It was no doubt a massive ego boost for Hugh, to be the first person to find a viable lead to Kara.

James still wondered how Kara had managed to stay under the radar for so long, considering how quickly he had found out since moving to National City. 

"This is the worst." Winn sighed. 

James looked up from his laptop. "You okay buddy?" 

Winn pinched his nose. "Getting there, I'm not about to bore you with the details but it's a nightmare, this is so much more than a powersurge." 

“If anyone can fix it, it’s you.” James replied easily.

He pulled up his emails and began to click through them, deleting and sorting them into their relevant folders. Eventually one piqued his interest enough for him to actually open it.

James must have been openly frowning by the time he finished reading it, as Winn stopped typing.

“Everything okay?”

“Do you know Maxwell Lord?” James asked.

“Uh, yeah. Billionaire, big into science and tech, why?”

James turned his laptop to show Winn, who rolled his seat over to read the email quickly, a frown of his own forming after a few moments. 

“Sounds like some weird tinfoil conspiracy bullshit.” Winn said after a few moments. 

And yeah, maybe it was. But with how crazy things had been the last few weeks, it was weird enough that it raised a red flag in James’s mind and if he had learned anything during his tenure at the Planet, it was to trust his instincts when that happened. But he still wanted a second opinion before going to Cat.

James pulled his phone out and scrolled through his contacts.

"What are you doing?" Winn asked. 

And when it came to Cat, there was only one person who came to mind.

James pressed the phone to his ear. "Calling Kara." 

\--

"You can't afford that first place and even if you could, they probably will never let you back in the building when they realise you stole their champagne." Alex said, going so far as to point out the two bottles that had their own seat at the table.

"I know but it's so pretty." Lucy whined. 

Kara tried to tune them out as she pretended to read the menu. 

As if she hadn't memorised Noonan's entire menu after two days. 

But this kind of conversation? It felt  _ too _ grown up for her. Alex had all but given Kara her apartment when she moved to National City, all Kara had to do was make sure she could pay her bills and very occasionally buy groceries.

So while Alex and Lucy argued about the security in each building, Kara stared at the words in front of her until they became fuzzy and let her thoughts drift to work. 

James had been vague on the phone, not elaborating beyond saying that he felt like he had a lead on a story and wanted her opinion. 

Kara couldn't explain it, but the fact that James wanted her opinion on a story? It kind of thrilled her. 

But she wondered how the whole CatCo situation was going, she wanted to know how Cat was handling the whole thing. 

It was annoying that all Kara wanted to do was take her a latte and make sure that Cat was okay. 

Kara blamed it on being in Noonan's. Muscle memory, that's what it was. 

"I might go for the third place." Lucy said. "Not the best security but it comes with some furniture so that saves me a bit of effort." 

Kara wondered where all of Lucy's belongings were, she didn't get the impression that Lucy had a home somewhere else. Kara couldn't explain why it made her chest ache to think about Lucy skipping from town to town, going where work took her. 

"You guys ready to order?" Jade, easily Kara's favourite barista, approached them and Kara was distracted by everything for long enough to order a small mountain of food. 

"Oh, Kara," Jade hovered as she took the menus from them. "Don't leave without saying hey to Candice, she baked you some cookies as a thank you for last week." 

Kara gasped. "The s’more ones she told me about?" 

"You know it." Jade replied with a conspiratorial wink. 

When she walked away, Alex looked critically at Kara. 

"What?" Kara asked. 

"Who's Candice and why and how did you help her out?" 

Kara shrugged. "I got here super early the other week and they had a delivery so I helped bring the boxes in through the back, no biggy." 

Sure the boxes had been surprisingly heavy and she knew at least one of them smelt heavily of wax and various scents but Candice had shrugged and said that candles were good for ambience. 

"And now she's baked you cookies?" Lucy asked. "That's cute." 

“This is a good place.” Kara replied with another shrug. “They always give me extra food.”   


Lucy grinned. “Adorable.”   
  
Before she had a chance to tease Kara further, Kara watched as Lucy’s gaze shifted to somewhere over her shoulder, the grin dropping from her face almost instantly. 

“Oh shit.”   
  
Alex looked around. “What’s happening?”   


Kara heard a more than familiar heartbeat and turned in time to see James approach them, a similar look of confusion on his face, he ignored Kara and stared at Lucy instead.

“Lucy? Hey?” James greeted. 

“James.”    
  
Realisation seemed to dawn on Alex’s face while Kara still felt a little lost.

Lucy seemed to pick up on this and put Kara out of her misery. “Me and James used to date.”

Kara shifted so that James could sit beside her. “You’re the Lucy who works with the… FBI now.”    
  
The pieces seemed to slip into place for James and Kara belatedly realised that she had completely forgotten to mention Lucy’s last name whenever she had come up in conversation. If she had, Kara probably would have spared them both this awkward moment had she done so.

Mostly Kara was just relieved that they hadn’t somehow crossed paths when Lucy had visited her at work.

They were given a brief reprieve when their food was delivered, Kara and Alex were all too happy to start digging in just to not have an excuse to contribute to the steadily building tension.

“Not gonna lie, this is awkward as shit.” Lucy acknowledged after a moment. “When Kara said we were meeting her friend James from work, never would have guessed it’d be you.”   
  
“Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me.” James replied. 

“So, it’s good to see you and we’re going to have to bite the bullet and talk one on one at some point considering we’re both friends with this one.” Lucy pointed her fork at Kara. “But I figured you have more important things going on at the moment.”   
  
James smiled. “Deal.”   
  
Kara paused eating long enough to appreciate the easy smile they both shared and turned her attention back to James.

“So why did you want to meet?” Kara asked.

“I got this email earlier.” James began, scrolling through his phone for a few moments before dropping it on the table and sliding it over to Kara. “You know Maxwell Lord right?”  
  
“Of course, owns Lord Technologies, we’re literally invited to his fundraiser on Saturday? Well, you are. I’m only going because I’m Cat’s assistant. Oh, he’s been Cat’s date a few times too.” Kara replied, there was a hint of bitterness to her tone that she couldn’t quite explain.

Lucy raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing.

Kara ignored it in favour of reading through the email. 

She couldn’t make much sense of it, she tried to read it as quickly as possible. The sender seemed to ramble on for a while about cell phone towers and a large amount of money being sunk into them.

“Don’t keep us hanging pup.” Lucy said, trying to lean over to read it.

“So this is from an old college buddy of mine.” James said, taking the phone back from Kara. “He’s big into conspiracy stuff but he’s been looking into these cell phone towers that Max has been building, he didn’t go into much detail because… Well, conspiracy guy, he probably thinks that everything is tapped.”   
  
“Sounds like a fun guy to bring to parties.” Alex grumbled.

“Essentially, the vibe I get is that he wants me to look into these towers because there’s a large amount of money being put into them.”   


“Is that it?” Alex asked. “That seems stupid.”   
  
James turned to Kara. “I just have a weird feeling about it. I want to look into it but I feel like Cat would shoot it down without ‘checking my sources’ you know?”   
  
“Especially after the whole Leslie situation, I understand.” Kara nodded. “Why bring it to me though?”   
  
James shrugged. “You know Cat better than anyone else, I want your input on it, and if you’re up for it, I could use your help investigating?”   
  
“You want me to help?” Kara asked. “Why?”

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed Kara, but you’re got some talents that make having you on my side would make investigating this easier.”   
  
“Is that just a fancy way of saying you want me to use my hearing because it’s a loophole in tapping people's phones?” Kara asked.

“Kind of, yeah.”   
  
“I’m in.” Kara replied.

There was a slight disapproving crease in Alex’s forehead, but whatever thoughts she had, she kept to herself for the time being.

“How is it being in CatCo. when the place has no power?” Lucy asked politely.

“Remarkably calm, for me at least. Winn is pulling his hair out trying to get everything back up though, and Cat hasn’t left her office all day.”   
  
That got Kara’s attention. “All day?”   
  
“She’s been on the phone for most of it.” James said sympathetically. “Conference calls and stuff, I definitely don’t envy her.”   
  
Kara only took a few moments to make a decision and she turned back to James. “Are you going back up soon?”   
  
“Yeah. Why?”   
  
“Give me ten minutes and I'll come with.” Kara replied.

Lucy pouted. “You’re bailing on girls day out?” 

“It won’t take you ten minutes to eat that.” Alex said. 

Kara glared at Alex for a few moments before she turned to Lucy. “I’ll make it up to you, promise.   


“You better.” Lucy tried to look angry but there was no genuine heat behind it and Kara realised this was just another way for her to tease Kara.

“Cross my heart.” Kara replied. She turned back to James. “I just need to see a girl about some cookies.”

\--

There was a knock at the door that startled Cat in its gentleness, the retort on her lips quickly died when she looked up and saw Kara hovering in her doorway. 

“You do realise that usually, when someone is given a day off, they don’t tend to go to the place they work during that day.” 

Kara took that as an invitation and stepped into the office with an almost shy smile, coffee cup and takeout bag from Noonan’s in hand. 

“I promise I'm not here to work, I was just having lunch and I met up with James, I’m just dropping by to say hi to Winn.” She stepped closer and placed the cup on Cat’s desk. “Then I figured you hadn’t eaten so...”   
  
She placed the bag on the desk too and took a step back.

“I promise it’s all organic and I have it under good authority that it’s good quality.” Kara continued to explain.

"As long as it's not Chipotle I'd say you're fine." Cat said. 

Kara almost snorted. "Believe me, I'm not about to make  _ that  _ mistake again anytime soon." 

Kara clasped her hands in front of her and glanced over at the sofa. 

"Will everything be back to normal tomorrow?" Kara asked. 

Cat took a sip from her latte and hummed happily, up until Kara, getting a cup of coffee at this temperature was damn near impossible. 

Hell, even the first couple weeks when Kara had started working for her they had barely been passable. She wondered what had changed and  _ how _ but had never bothered to ask. 

"In theory. The hobbit that trails around behind you disappeared a little while ago so I assume he's doing something productive and we got a new story." 

Kara raised an eyebrow and trailed closer to the desk. 

"New story?" 

Cat removed her glasses and tossed them onto the desk. 

"It would appear that our hooded hero is making a bit of a career out of being a vigilante." 

This time Kara moved all the way back to the desk and sat in one of the seats. 

"Really?" 

"Yes, it turns out there was an attempted mugging but it was stopped by our vigilante." 

“You-” Kara paused and for the briefest moment it looked like a whirlwind of emotions flicked across her face. “You keep saying ‘our’?”   
  
“Kiera, did you know that our sales have been steadily rising since Olsen got us that picture of the Vigilante staring down a serial killer? Print media is dying and yet my staff at the Trib are safe because this person stepped onto the scene at just the right time.”

“So… What are you going to do?” Kara asked.

“I’m going to find that Vigilante and get that interview.” 

Kara nodded quickly and stood up. “Right, that sounds, that sounds good? If anyone can do that, it’s you.”

She backed away slowly towards the door and gestured behind her with her thumb. Cat merely raised an eyebrow and watched her go.

“I’m just gonna go and see if uh, see if Winn needs any help. I’ll be here for a while so just call if you need anything.”   
  
“You should be leaving the building considering it’s your day off.” Cat replied.

Though clearly, her words were going to go unheard. For whatever reason, Kara was almost as attached to her work as Cat was. 

Once Kara was out of sight, Cat reached for the takeout bag and pulled out the container, opening it to nod approvingly at the salad wrap. 

At the bottom of the bag though, were two cookies. They looked like each one had Cat's weekly sugar intake. 

And had there not been a little scribbled note on one of the napkins, Cat would have thought Kara had forgotten them. 

_ For you and Carter, they're honestly to die for. (: -K _

\--

“You didn’t listen to a word I just said, did you?” Winn asked.

Kara startled and span around to face him. “What? I totally did.”   
  
“What did I just say?” 

“....Computer broken?”   
  
“Close enough.” Winn sighed.

She had found him on the floor in the server room, wires sticking out from his laptop as he rubbed under his eyes. The poor guy was doing the work of a dozen people and Kara felt that the least she could do was sit around and provide moral support.

If it meant that she could hide from Cat to process their conversation, then even better. 

“I’ve gotten the servers back up, but I’m still working on getting the security footage back.”   
  
“Any theories what caused it?” Kara asked.

“Nobody is talking but… It’s too much of a coincidence that it started in the basement, the night Leslie got fired right?”   
  
Definitely too much of a coincidence.

She wondered where Leslie was now.

Was Cat going to press charges if Leslie was behind it? 

Her thoughts seemed to circle back to Cat a lot.

“Dude. What’s wrong?” Winn asked.

“Nothing.”   
  
Winn frowned. “Convincing. Is it the Cat looking for your alter ego thing? Call Lucy, tell her what’s going on. She’ll have advice for you.”   
  
It wasn’t a bad suggestion. So Kara pulled out her phone and hit Lucy’s name.

"We have a problem." Kara whispered as soon as she answered. 

Lucy laughed.  _ "What now?"  _

"Cat wants to find the Vigilante."

Another laugh.  _ "Easy enough. We get you a costume." _

"Lucy! Be serious. What if Alex finds out? What if Cat figures out it’s me?” 

Lucy was quiet for a few moments.  _ "Right. Okay. You know I’m an optimist so while I’m absolutely down to keep it from Alex there’s only so much we can do. But as for the Cat situation… Maybe try not to give her any ammunition to make the connection."  _

"That part, I can do." 

\--

Cat sighed as the cool air hit her skin as she stepped out of CatCo. By now she was more than accustomed to leaving later than everybody else, but due to the events of the day, the building had almost been completely empty. 

She'd made sure to shoo Kara away only ten minutes earlier after she had let Cat know that her driver was on route. 

Cat didn't pay that girl enough to stay as late as she did, and yet Kara rarely left when everybody else did. Even on a day off Cat couldn’t get Kara to stay away. 

Her driver was waiting at the front of the building, the engine was running and it was only a short walk from the doors to get inside the car. 

Cat couldn't wait to settle back into those leather seats and kick her heels off. 

"Grant!" A vaguely familiar voice called as she reached the pavement. 

Cat raised an eyebrow and turned to the figure calling after her, confused at the way she had been addressed. 

A man stood before her and she could just about make out his features in the dying light of the day. 

He was familiar, though dishevelled in jeans and a hoody. One hand shoved into his pocket, face twisted in disdain and a sway to his stance that she was all too familiar with. 

"Can I help you?" She asked in a deliberate drawl, raising an eyebrow as she took him in. 

The harshness of his laugh made something uneasy settle in her stomach and made the back of her neck tingle. 

"You don't even recognise me do you?" He laughed again. "God, you're fucking unbelievable." 

It clicked then. The tone of his voice brought a fully formed image to the front of her mind. 

Cat had never seen the man before her dressed in anything but a suit, but there was no mistaking who it was. 

"Derek." Cat said simply.

The sports section editor she had fired a few weeks ago. 

"Oh, so you do know my name." He pointed a finger accusingly at her. "Because of  _ you _ nobody will hire me. I can't get a fucking job anywhere because of you." 

Cat called upon every method of self control she had learned to keep her voice even. 

" _ You  _ were the one harassing my staff and spewing misogynist language. If you can't find another job because of your behaviour, that is your fault. Not mine." Cat replied. "You're drunk, so I suggest you go home and sleep it off before I call security." 

He shook his head disbelievingly and pulled his hand from his pocket. That was when she finally saw the gun in his hand, the streetlight overhead causing it to glint dangerously. 

She couldn't be certain if the fear was showing on her face. 

"I told you I'd make you pay." He warned. 

"Oh please," She flicked a hand at him. "you think you're the first disgruntled former employee to point a gun at me? Walk away Derek. Get a therapist and work through your problems." 

And okay, he  _ was  _ the first, but being dismissive was all she had. Cat wasn't about to beg for her life to someone like him. 

She was just glad that Carter wasn't with her, that he was safe and at home with Ella. That he would be taken care of no matter what happened to her. 

She was glad that she had sent Kara away, because ever the optimist, that woman would no doubt throw herself in between them and try to talk him down or even worse, take a bullet for Cat. 

His hand shook as he held the gun, though he kept it deliberately at his hip. No doubt it was because of that reaon, her driver hadn't noticed what was going on. 

"Always have to try to have the last word. Well no, not this time." He took a shaky breath. "Fuck you. Cat Grant." 

They always say that in moments like this, time slows down, that your life flashes before your eyes. 

Cat didn't get the chance for either to happen. As he spoke she saw something moving towards them startlingly fast from her peripheral vision and barely had the time to react before a shadowy figure was sliding over the hood of the car and planting themselves firmly between Cat and her assailant. 

The arrival threw Derek off, who went deathly pale as he stared at her over the shoulder of the hooded figure -  _ the vigilante  _ \- Cat belatedly realised. 

"Who the fuck-" he gasped, taking a small step backwards. 

Cat heard the car door open, the vigilante having caught her drivers attention. 

"Ms. Grant, is everything-" the rest of his words were lost to Cat, too hyper aware of the scene playing out in front of her to pay him any attention. 

"Drop the gun, and  _ leave. _ " The vigilante said. 

Growled would be a more accurate term. The voice was almost distorted but Cat could still pick up a sense of lightness to the tone amongst the sheer amount of anger. 

Up close, Cat tried to take in as much as she could about the person in front of her, how, despite the baggy burgundy hoody they were wearing Cat could make out the almost frame underneath. 

"What are you?" Derek hissed. 

The vigilante must have seen something Cat couldn't, because they moved quickly, both hands going for the gun. 

When the shot was fired, Cat recoiled, shock coursing through her as the figure doubled over in a cry of pain that sent Cat’s mind reeling.

And in a movement far too fluid for someone who just got shot, they grabbed Derek by the back of the neck with one arm, twisting their body to the side as they ripped the gun from his hands and threw it past Cat and well out of the way, as they turned back to smash his head into the roof of the car, dropping Derek unconscious to the ground. 

Cat felt her driver appear at her side, grabbing her arm as he moved to pull her back. She heard shouting from CatCo, the security guards apparently finally catching up to the events unfolding too. 

But those details felt insignificant as she caught the briefest of glimpses of her saviour. 

There was no mistaking it. 

It was a woman beneath that hood. 

The woman's face was mostly obscured by the shadows of her hood as she let out a shaky breath, the hand that was clutching at her hip as blood spilled between delicate fingertips. 

The smallest flash of gold as she cast her eyes sideways to look at Cat. 

"You're safe now, Ms. Grant." She said.

And god, there was something painfully familiar about that too, but the voice was too distorted for Cat to place easily. 

Cat wondered how this woman was able to make her voice sound like she was growling so easily. 

"Who are you?" Cat found herself asking, but it was no use. 

The woman spinted off the way she came, using the car to push herself upright and leaving nothing but a bloody handprint in her wake. 

Well, that and an unconscious man who had been about to murder her in front of her kingdom. 

Cat could scarcely breathe. 

\--

Kara ran for as long as she could, darting down alleys until she was certain she wasn’t being followed.

Cat was safe, her driver and the security guards had been there as she ran and Kara could pick up the sirens approaching from the edge of her senses. 

She pressed her hand harder against her hip, sending a fresh burst of pain through her body as she collapsed into the side of a dumpster, letting herself slide down to it and taking huge gulping breaths to try to calm herself. 

Someone had tried to murder Cat tonight, and it was only by sheer luck that Kara had still been close enough to pick up Cat's heartbeat. To hear it spike with fear and allow her to focus her hearing to pick up the conversation happening. 

She had saved Cat's life. 

So much for staying away. 

Kara hissed as she rolled the hoody up to inspect the damage. The bullet hadn't gone clean through and blood was still spilling freely from the hole it had left behind. It may be a regular bullet, but her healing wasn't going to kick in fully while it was still inside her. 

And werewolf or not, blood loss was definitely still something she needed to be conscious of.

It took a considerable effort to pull herself back to her feet and pull her phone free from her pocket and Kara almost laughed (probably not a good sign) when her phone wouldn't recognise her fingerprint purely because of the amount of blood coating her hand. 

Still, she managed to call Alex and was working out the fastest route back to her own apartment by the time she answered. 

_ "Kara? What's up?"  _

"I did something stupid." Kara mumbled into the phone. "I need help." 

_ "What happened? Are you okay?" _ Alex asked, fear and worry heavy in her voice. 

Kara could hear her moving around already. 

"Guy… Cat fired him. He was mad, just tried to shoot her in front of CatCo." Kara tried to explain as best she could. "I saved her." 

_ "Kara, what happened? Where are you?" _

"He shot me. I'm in the alley behind Noonans. I'm trying to get home." 

_ "Fuck." _ Alex gasped.  _ "Send me your location. Stay where you are, keep pressure on the wound. I'll see if anyone is closer to get to you first okay?"  _

Kara leant against a wall and closed her eyes. "Okay." she sighed. 

_ "I'm going to call you back in two minutes, okay? If you don't answer I'm going to kick your ass." _

"You're going to kick my ass anyway." Kara pointed out. 

_ "You're damn right. Hang in there, okay?"  _

"Okay." 

As she hung up, Kara sensed a heartbeat close by, unfamiliar and fast. She paused for a moment and focused her senses further, pushing past the copper scent of her own blood that dominated and picked up a scent that was painfully familiar.

There had been times growing up where Kara had tried to explain to Alex, and even Eliza and Jeremiah, just exactly how werewolves could identify each other. She’d never quite managed it though and Alex was always frustrated by the  _ “You just know”  _ line that Kara always ended up saying. 

This was one of those moments though, and Kara found herself pushing off of the wall and moving closer to meet the approaching wolf.

As the wolf slowly approached, Kara took a moment eyeing them up.

A woman, maybe a couple years older than herself. Long dark hair and even in the shadows Kara could make out the bags under her gold eyes.

She watched as the wolf in front of her dropped her gaze to Kara’s hip, brow furrowing in almost concern.

“You’re the Omega.” The wolf said.

Kara bit back on the retort forming on her tongue. The perk of being the only werewolf for how many miles meant that wasn’t a comment she’d heard. 

Never thought she’d hear it to be fair.

“Who are you?” Kara asked instead. “What do you want?”   
  
“You killed Jonah.”   
  
Jonah?

“I’ve never killed anyone.” Kara growled. 

She watched the claws slip out and took a step back. This woman was angry and Kara knew she was too hurt to be able to hold her own right now.

“Your humans killed him and I know you were there.”   


But ever true to her word, two minutes must have passed because she felt her phone ringing and knew that it was Alex.

She answered the phone, not taking her eyes off of the woman in front of her.

_ "Lucy's hotel is down the street from you. She's coming now, I'm on my way. I'm staying on the line till she gets there."  _

Kara heard the screech of tyres and some angry sounding honking and knew that Alex was probably breaking every traffic law there is to make good on her promise. 

_ "You still with me?" _ Alex asked. 

"I'm with you." Kara replied as steadily as she could. "But we have a bit of a problem." 

Alex was scarily quiet for a moment.  _ "What is it?"  _

The werewolf snarled.

Kara growled back in warning. "I’ve got company." 

As the werewolf pounced, Kara threw her phone as gently as she could to the side and raised her arms to stop the wolf's claws from getting too close to her throat. 

_ “Hey, you okay?”  _ Alex called.

The wolf grabbed Kara’s shoulders and brought her knee up to Kara’s stomach, sending a fresh wave a pain through her.

“Wolf!” Kara yelled, hoping to god that Alex would be able to hear her. 

Kara threw her head forward to headbutt the werewolf, the impact was enough to make the grip on her shoulders loosen so that Kara could push her back a few feet. 

_ “Fuck. Listen, Lucy will be here in a minute, she’ll have her sidearm. I’m going to text her to warn her.”  _

Kara took a punch to the face and was shoved backwards into a wall before Alex’s words registered to her.

“Don’t you dare text and drive!” Kara yelled back.

_ “I am at lights!” _ _   
_ _   
_ “That doesn’t make it okay!”    
  
_ “I’ll pull over! Focus on your own problems!” _

God, she really was trying. 

Kara was doing her best to avoid the claws, thankful that she couldn’t feel them breaking the skin. Winn absolutely wasn’t getting this hoody back. 

“I don’t want to fight you.” Kara protested weakly. “Please, just leave.”   
  
“You and your people killed one of my pack.” The werewolf snarled.

“Pack?” Kara pushed her back. “You have a pack? Who are you?”

She tilted her head to one side as she heard movement, relaxing as she picked up on Lucy's heartbeat approaching. 

"Lucy is coming." Kara said, locking eyes with the mystery werewolf.

"Lucy is here!" Lucy announced loudly, coming from around the corner and Kara heard the sound of Lucy clicking the safety off of her gun. 

“You might want to leave before you and I end up with matching wounds.”   


For a moment she thought the other werewolf was going to lunge at her, only to be quietly relieved when the gold faded from her eyes, being replaced with a steely hazel. 

“This isn’t over.” She warned, stepping back.

“Step out of the way, Superwolf!” Lucy called from behind her.

Kara was too tired to think of a comeback but stayed in place between Lucy and the other wolf. “Just go.” 

The woman looked puzzled for a long moment, glancing over Kara’s shoulder at Lucy before looking back at Kara and nodded before turning around and disappearing back into the shadows.

Kara covered her stomach once more and let out a long groan, shifting back towards the wall and sliding down it.

Lucy holstered her gun and quickly closed the distance between them, grabbing Kara’s phone from the ground as she crouched down beside Kara. 

“Is she gone?” Lucy asked Kara quietly, she brought the phone up to her ear. "Danvers, I'm here, what do you need me to do?" Lucy asked. 

Kara listened until the werewolf’s heartbeat faded into the noise of the city. “She’s gone.”

_ "Just… Try to help slow the bleeding, I'll be there in two minutes, get ready to get her in the car."  _ Alex said.

"You got it." Lucy replied before Alex hung up. 

She looked up to study Kara carefully for a moment, eyes drifting down to look at the bloody mess, lips quirking into a small smile. 

"Jesus Kara, I leave you alone for ten minutes and you get a gut shot and jumped by another werewolf?" She asked. “I said don’t give Cat ammunition, this is too literal.”

Kara laughed, even as she winced through the pain. 

"Oh yeah, get ready for a lot of that, have you been shot before?" 

"Not directly." Kara murmured. 

Lucy gave her a curious look, but let it go in favour of clicking open the first aid kit. "Get ready then, cause this is going to suck. You ready?" 

Kara nodded and closed her eyes, clenching her fists as she felt Lucy roll her hoody and shirt up. The sting that came from the shirt pulling away from her skin was nothing compared to the burn of the antiseptic being poured over the wound. 

It didn't help that the shock of the pain made Kara wrench her head back into the wall, hard enough for her to feel the bricks crack under the force, or how she dug her nails into the palms of her hands. 

Lucy worked fast though, pressing gauze to her stomach and taping it in place, giving Kara's shoulders a hard squeeze when she was done. 

"That'll buy us some time until Alex can get you somewhere to get the bullet out, you okay?" 

Kara blinked one eye open. "Never better." 

Lucy settled back on her heels, glancing down at Kara's phone briefly before meeting her gaze again. 

"So… You took a bullet for Cat?" 

"Do we have to talk about this now?"

"Got somewhere else you need to be?" Lucy asked, glancing down at the phone as it chimed. "saved by the bell. It's Alex, come on superwolf, let's get you out of here." 

Lucy jumped to her feet, taking hold of Kara's hands to pull her upright and frowning as age felt blood slick against her palms. She said nothing as she supported Kara as they walked to where Alex was waiting, backseat already thrown open for them. 

"Where did you get the first aid kit from?" Kara asked. 

"Stole it from the hotel, I think I need to commit to an apartment as soon as possible. They are not fans of me." 

\--

Cat leant against the balcony and sipped at her scotch. 

Carter had been asleep by the time she got home and while all she wanted was a hug, the last thing she wanted to do was to wake him up, all that would do is scare him. 

So here she was, alone with a storm of thoughts with nobody to voice them to. 

Her thoughts kept drifting back to her saviour, it was clearly the same person who had been involved at the docks and the attempted mugging, that much Cat knew for certain. 

But she knew Cat's name, which, admittedly, wasn't out of the ordinary. She was a well known public figure. But it was the  _ familiarity  _ in which she had spoken to her that threw Cat. 

She needed to know who that woman was. 

Tomorrow would be difficult, secrets were hard to keep in National City and considering her line of work, she wouldn't be surprised if the entire building knew by the time she walked in. 

That was something for Cat to worry about later. 

Tonight, she would sit and think about how she was going to explain to Carter how she nearly died tonight. 

  
  


\--

  
  


Astra didn’t know who owned the cabin. Just that they had very good taste in vodka. 

She felt as though they’d have a heart attack if they could see her drinking it directly from the bottle right now as she traced the pattern of the moon in the reflection of the lake.

Most of her pack were out there somewhere, in the woods. Familiarising themselves with new territory and training. She assumed Non was somewhere in National City, most likely trying to track down the other creatures they had received whispers of who had made that city their home. 

It wouldn’t surprise her if he didn’t come back tonight, since they had arrived he’d steadily been spending more time in the city. It was strange how he hated them so much, and yet seemed to fit right into the shadows that the towers offered. 

When the almost subtle scent of blood hit her senses, Astra perked up. Looking around until she picked up the scent and accompanying heartbeat of one of her pack approaching.

She relaxed when it became clear that there was no immediate danger and turned her attention back to the lake, waiting patiently for them to reach her.

“You’re back early.” Astra commented. “Is everything alright?”   
  
“The other wolf Non told us about. I met her.” 

“And?”   


“He was right, she works with the humans. She was shot when I found her.”   
  
Astra turned to her beta and could see the frown on her face as the woman stared at the lake, clearly processing whatever events had occurred. 

She was their newest recruit but Astra felt that she had the most potential. A broken woman still mourning the loss of her daughter and while Astra had never had a child herself, she could relate to that pain.

It’s been twelve years and she still clings to the hope that her instincts are right, that her niece was out there somewhere.

Her friend would never get to hope like that.

Astra offered her the bottle.   


“Drink, and then tell me everything, Samantha.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, don't text and drive
> 
> Also, there isn't going to be a chapter next week as i'm honestly burnt the hell out because of work and stuff (it's mental illness innit)
> 
> Thank you guys for all the support so far and i'll see you for chapter 6 on the 18th
> 
> Much love and stay safe


	6. Holding out for a hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cat unintentionally complicates the situation, Kara tries to monitor the situation. Meanwhile, a heart to heart helps Alex know what her next step needs to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Holding out for a hero" By Bonnie Tyler
> 
> Purely because that song slaps and it played on the radio at work today. 
> 
> Any mistakes are totally on me

Kara woke to streaks of sunlight and Alex's foot firmly in her face. 

She tried to be careful about unfurling herself off the sofa without waking Alex. 

Once she got herself to a sitting position she spotted Lucy curled up into the armchair in a position that absolutely could not feel comfortable. 

The last thing Kara remembered clearly was Alex patching her up after getting the bullet out and Alex taking her phone from her to stop her calling Cat. 

("You can't call her! You're not supposed to know what happened tonight!") 

She also remembered that Lucy had dug out some vodka and insisted on celebratory shots for Kara… Getting shot. 

Alex and Lucy must have carried on after she fell asleep, judging by the empty bottle at her feet. 

Kara frowned at the flakes of dried blood on her hands as she wandered over to her bathroom to shower. 

Her stomach _ached._ Alex had stitched it up, just to help give her healing a bit more support, but god today was going to be rough. 

After the quickest shower she dared to take, Kara threw her hair back into a ponytail and dressed in the softest shirt and cardigan she owned. Only to step out of her bedroom to find Alex pouring two cups of coffee in her kitchen. 

"Why is blood so hard to get off skin?" Kara asked quietly. 

"Tell me about it." Alex pushed a cup to Kara. "How do you feel?" 

"Kinda like I got shot." 

Alex made a face. 

"Too soon?" 

"Little bit." Alex replied. She pushed a hand through her hair and sighed. "So talk me through it again." 

"Getting shot or angry werewolf?" 

"Angry werewolf." 

Kara frowned. In the brief moments she'd had to think of everything that had happened, ultimately it had all kept circling back to one specific point. 

Cat had almost been shot, would have been shot had Kara not been in the right place at the right time. 

"What are you thinking?" Alex asked. 

"How, if I hadn't gone back to CatCo and stayed with Winn, Cat would probably be dead now." 

"Yeah that's pretty dark." Alex said. "Not to gloss over it, but she's alive, maybe a bit traumatised? But you saved her." 

Alex even sounded proud, which brightened Kara's mood slightly. She'd been prepared for a speech about risking her identity but it hadn't come. 

Yet at least. The day was still young. 

"The other wolf didn’t say much, I don't know why she was there. I tried to memorise her heartbeat now and I might be able to track her if we needed to, but all I really got from her was that there’s a whole pack out there and they’re angry and we _killed_ one of them Alex.” 

Alex’s eyes widened slightly as Kara finished speaking and in that moment it hit Kara too.

The werewolf they’d killed had a pack.

If Kara could track the other wolf, would she be able to track Kara?

Alex reached across and grabbed Kara’s hand. “You didn’t kill him Kara, that was me. I killed him.”

“He had a pack, Alex. He wasn’t a rogue, he couldn’t have been feral.”

“Could he have been a new turn? With the eclipse and full moon…” Alex trailed off.

She was trying to comfort Kara, that much was obvious but Kara could barely pay attention. Nothing was making sense now.

“That would only explain the behaviour of those few days, he- Jonah, she said his name was, he’d been killing for days leading up to it.” Kara replied. 

It was moments like this that Kara wished her mother was here. Kara could picture her in her study, bookshelves full of books, journals and curiosities. Fingers skimming across spines and flicking through worn pages to find the answer.

Kara wished she had paid more attention when she was younger, maybe then she wouldn’t feel so much like she was running around in the dark.

“It doesn’t make sense Alex, what could have made him act like that?” Kara asked.

“I don’t know but we’ll figure it out, okay? His body is still at the DSO so I’ll run some tests.” Alex squeezed her hand. “I don't suppose I can talk you into taking the day off?" 

"Unless you want to make Cat suspicious then no." Kara replied. She downed the rest of her coffee and sighed. "Also I really need to see if she's okay." 

"Good point. What do we do about her?" Alex nodded her head to where Lucy continued to sleep. 

"Let her sleep, I guess." Kara shrugged. "She can borrow something from my closet too if her clothes are as as bloody as mine were." 

Alex sighed. "Fine, I'll stay here then. You better go though, can't be late." 

"Call you later?" 

"You better." 

As soon as she closed the door she heard the unmistakable sound of a pillow hitting someone and Lucy's groan of protest. 

\--

Cat had been awake for longer than she could keep track of. 

Admittedly she had spent the last few hours in the kitchen, working her way through a pot of coffee she had made and keeping a steady eye on the news and twitter. 

All while listening out for the soft footfalls of her son. 

No specific details had been released yet, thankfully, but she had noticed a few tweets that were slowly starting to get traction. 

Pictures of police tape and flashing lights outside of CatCo wouldn't stay under the radar for long and Cat was thankful that she wasn't present in any of them. 

But still, it was best to get ahead of the curve. She made a note to text Kara after she spoke to Carter, arranging for a statement to be released seemed like the smartest course of action. Maybe even a brief interruption to scheduled programming for a physical appearance.

She wasn't about to let other media outlets turn her into a victim. 

Cat was pulled from her thoughts by the sound of Carter's door opening. He did a double take when he saw her in the kitchen. 

Admittedly, she would usually be in her own room or office when he first woke up, but Cat didn't think it was that odd of a change to warrant the clear surprise. 

"Morning." He greeted, shuffling into the kitchen, eyeing the pot of coffee curiously. "How long have you been up?" 

"A while, what do you want for breakfast?" Cat asked.

He was already moving around the kitchen, grabbing a bowl from the cupboard. "Cereal is fine, are you okay?" 

"I'm fine. How was school yesterday?" 

Carter gave her a long look for a moment and Cat knew immediately that he didn't quite believe her. 

"The usual. What's wrong?" Carter took a seat opposite her. 

Cat took a deep breath. She hated this, this was a conversation that she didn't want to happen, but Cat knew that if she didn't do this then he would find out some other way and she couldn't face the look of betrayal. She had never lied to Carter, and it wasn’t something she intended to start doing.

"I don't want you to worry, and I know that isn't a good way to start a talk, but there was an incident at CatCo. last night." 

"What happened? Are you okay? Is Kara- what happened?" 

Cat reached for his hand and gave it a brief squeeze. "I'm fine, she… Kara is fine too. She wasn't there. I was leaving work and was confronted by a… disgruntled former employee." 

Carter narrowed his eyes. "What aren't you telling me?" 

"He had a gun." 

"Mom!" 

Cat held her hands up. "I'm fine, honey, I swear. There's a vigilante on the streets, the one who stopped the wolf-man? She saved me. He was arrested, he's in custody and everything is fine." 

Carter seemed to relax slightly but there was still heavy concern in his eyes. 

"This is understandably a lot for you to take in this early in the morning, but I wanted you to hear the truth from me before it broke on the news. Do you have any questions?" 

Carter tapped his fingers against his bowl for a few moments, staring at the contents of his breakfast before meeting Cat's gaze again. 

"Did he fire the gun?" 

"...Yes. But as you can see it didn't hit me." 

"But it hit someone?" He asked and Cat could see the dots connecting. "It hit your vigilante person?" 

"Yes." 

"Is she okay?" 

"I don't know dear, she ran as soon as she knocked him out but I'm going to have people try to track her down."

Carter nodded thoughtfully. "But you're safe right?" 

Cat reached for his hand again and held onto it. "I'm safe. We're safe. He'll be going to jail for this." 

"Okay." Carter pulled his hand away and ran it through his hair. "Okay, I don't have any other questions." 

"Are you okay to go to school today?" Cat asked. 

He nodded. "Are you going to work?" 

"Now I know you're okay, yes." 

"I'll get ready once I've eaten." 

\--

Kara tapped her foot anxiously against the floor as she stared at the doors to Cat's elevator. 

"I'd ask if you'd heard about what happened, but considering the information I have involves someone leaping in front of a gun wearing a hoody, I assume you already know." Winn said instead of a greeting, dropping his bag on the desk. "Are you okay?" 

"How do you know?" Kara asked. 

"Overheard security talking about it." Winn shrugged. "You got _shot_?" 

"I got better!" Kara replied. "Mostly." 

Cat's text had been to the point, as always, had simply told her to have her makeup team on standby. 

Kara had considered asking why, but decided against it. Part of her was certain that Cat wouldn’t have told her if she had.

It didn't bother Kara that Cat hadn't told her anything, they weren't friends. 

It really didn't bother her. 

"Is everything all back up and running?" Kara asked instead. 

"Okay, I see what you're doing and I respect that but I _will_ be demanding details later." Winn dropped into his seat and typed for a few moments. "But yes, back to normal. I think. There might be a few bugs but… Future problem for future me." 

"You really need a pay rise." Kara mumbled. She could hear the elevator rising and soon enough, Cat's heartbeat became clear. 

She got up, tucked her tablet under one arm and grabbed Cat's latte with the other. 

When the doors opened, anybody else would have thought Cat had had one too many mimosas with Sarah Paulson again. 

Sunglasses firmly in place, dressed to kill in a blood red dress, there were no outward signs that anything was amiss. 

But to Kara, the heartbeat betrayed everything else, it was a lot faster than usual. The fact she could smell caffeine underneath the perfume made her wonder how much Cat had already drank today. 

"Keira, have the team in my office ready for a meeting in ten minutes." 

"Of course, is everything okay?" Kara asked. 

Cat took the latte in a smooth movement and breezed past her. "Bring your iPad." 

Kara watched her go and glanced back at Winn who was watching them curiously. 

"This is going to be a long day, isn't it?" Winn asked. 

"I'm not getting good vibes, no." Kara agreed. "But I can’t see it getting worse anytime soon, so it'll be fine." 

It'll be fine. 

\--

"What the fuck is this?" Alex practically shoved the phone into Lucy's face. 

Lucy almost fell off of the stool and batted the phone away. 

"Okay, please do me a solid and lower the voice, it's still way too early." Lucy mumbled. 

She had no idea how Alex and Kara had dragged themselves up, hell, Kara had been shot and _still_ went to work. 

Though with a boss like Cat Grant, Lucy couldn’t blame her. She’d never take a sick day if she were in Kara’s shoes.

Alex held the phone out for her. "Did you know about this?" 

Lucy only skimmed the first few lines and knew immediately what Alex had seen. 

So much for Alex not reading the Trib. 

"I have no idea what this is." Lucy said. 

"You're a terrible liar." 

"Correction, I am a brilliant liar. After caffeine." Lucy pushed the phone back and folded her arms over her chest. “Have you considered the possibility that there could be someone out there wearing gold contacts and saving the day?”

Alex glared at her. “Cut the bullshit.”

"Okay! Yes, fine. I may have known about Kara's trip into vigilante…ism. Vigilantism? Is that a word?"

Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm going to kill her. I'm actually going to kill her." 

"I'd really rather you didn't, because now you've made me an accessory to the fact and I don't think you and I would be friends in prison." 

Alex covered her face with her hands and sighed heavily.

Okay, so maybe reel in the jokes for a bit.

"But maybe give Kara a bit of a break? She did get shot last night." Lucy suggested. "I can't imagine work is going to be easy for her either." 

Alex dropped her hands and levelled Lucy with a long look before letting out another, more resigned, sigh. 

"I don't have the energy for this right now, I need to head into the DSO to try and fix this which means I politely need to kick you out." 

"You treat all the girls you spend the night with like this?" Lucy grinned. 

For a moment, Alex kind of looked like she was going to throw something else at her. 

"Okay, fine! Getting up and leaving." Lucy grabbed her own phone from where she had abandoned it and made her way to the door. 

"Just make sure you give Kara her sweater back!" Alex called after her. “And don’t let her walk into more bullets while I’m gone.”

Lucy didn't bother to answer, she did have a question that she needed to ask Kara, like hell she wasn't going to go see her as soon as possible. 

\--

Kara met James's gaze across Cat's office as the final person entered and closed the door behind him. 

"Now, updates. Everything is back up and running, the investigation is still ongoing as to what or _who_ exactly caused the fire and system outage." Cat began, she chewed on the edge of her glasses. "It's business as usual in that regard." 

"Winn did a really good job at getting everything back up. Yesterday was hard but he was the reason we got through it." James spoke up. 

"Yes, thank you James." Cat replied. 

She didn't actually roll her eyes, but Kara could tell she was actually restraining herself. 

"As for today, I have a small crew ready to record a statement in regards to an incident last night." Cat placed her glasses aside as clasped her hands on her desk. "I wanted you all to know first though. Last night, Derek, our former sports editor confronted me outside of the building and attempted to shoot me. He failed, obviously but I plan on interrupting the schedule and releasing a statement to the public explaining what happened in the next few hours." 

"Are you alright?" James asked. 

"Perfectly fine.” Cat dismissed. “Now due to yesterday's issues we're behind so I need you all to rally your teams together for a big push today to get us back on schedule, understood?" 

A chorus of quiet agreements and Kara stared at the mostly blank page on her tablet as she tried not to frown, it felt odd to her that Cat wasn't elaborating further on what happened last night. Surely it was important information to tell them about Kara's involvement? 

Or at least, her alter-ego, did it count as an alter-ego now?

Things were starting to get confusing.

"Now chop chop people, we have a deadline to hit." Cat clapped her hands. 

Kara hovered while everyone left, watching as Cat placed her glasses on and wrote down a few more notes. Was it what she planned on saying? Kara tried to shuffle closer to see. 

"I believe I said 'chop chop' Kiera or are you suddenly hard of hearing?" 

"No, no uh, hearing is just fine. Perfect actually." Kara stepped closer. "I just wanted to make sure you really were okay." 

Cat twisted her seat around to face Kara, it felt like she was trying to glare but even to Kara it didn't quite seem to hit its mark. 

"Kiera, I am perfectly fine. Though you may need to fire the driver I had last night." 

"I- If that's what you want, can I ask you why though?" 

"I believe he was playing idly on his phone during most of the incident, had my Vigilante not shown up just in time and if I remember correctly security didn't come until after the gun had been fired, I’d be dead." Cat explained, she twirled a curl of hair around her finger. 

It was the first time Cat had mentioned Kara's 'altar ego' and her involvement in last night and she really tried her best to act surprised. 

It was a little easier to act surprised if Cat was going to keep referring to Kara as _"my Vigilante"._

"Y-your Vigilante? She was there?" Kara asked. 

Cat paused for a moment and stared at Kara, there was a brief uptick in her heartbeat that left Kara feeling utterly confused. 

"She was." Cat confirmed. "She saved my life." 

Kara hugged her tablet to her chest. "Well, I'm really glad she was there. If there's anything I can do-" 

"That is your job, is it not?" Cat asked. 

"Right, of course." Kara made her way towards the door. "Shall I send your makeup team in?" 

"Yes, thank you." 

"Of course, Ms. Grant." Kara hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I’m really glad that you’re okay.”

\--

Lucy scanned the bullpen, eyes falling on Kara's empty desk, a quick glance into Cat's office showed that she wasn't around either. 

"Hey, Lucy right?" the guy at the desk next to Kara sat up in his seat. 

"Yep, that's me…" She searched her brain for a name. "Wils-" 

"Winn." He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "It's... It's Winn." 

"Yes, Winn. Hey." 

"Kara should be back soon, she's running some errands for Cat while she records some… Statement." 

"About the whole getting shot thing?" 

Winn looked surprised. "You know about that?" 

"I got to go all Greys Anatomy on her in an alleyway, it was a _whole_ situation." Lucy made herself comfortable in Kara's chair and rolled it closer. "I feel like Kara would have said something, but Cat doesn't know it's her right?" 

"Not that I know of, Kara hasn't come over having a meltdown about it. That wouldn't be good if she found out." Winn frowned. 

Lucy nodded along slowly. "So just, covering my bases here, you know about all of Kara's… Stuff, right?" 

"How much trouble would you be in if I didn't?" Winn asked with a grin. 

"I'd just make you disappear." Lucy shrugged. 

It was pretty satisfying to watch Winn almost turn white with fear. 

"Lucy, it's too early to be traumatising people." James scolded as he approached them. 

"But it's so much fun." Lucy protested. 

"You waiting for Kara?" James asked. 

Lucy held up Kara's sweater. "Just dropping this off, I wanted to see how she was doing." 

"Well, until she gets back, you got time for a chat?" 

"Sure thing." Lucy jumped to her feet and dropped the sweater on Kara's desk. "Shout us when she's back?" 

Winn waved a hand and let them leave. 

James led her through the bullpen to a sheek, if not slightly bare office. 

"This is definitely an upgrade from the little booth they gave you at the planet." Lucy said. "Not had a chance to go to IKEA yet? You could really do with a plant or some furniture here." 

"IKEA is banned from CatCo. Seriously, it's in the contract." James walked around to his desk and dropped into his seat.

Lucy nodded seriously, her gaze drifted to the empty walls. She would have expected him to hang up some of his pieces by now. 

"Is this weird?" James asked. 

Lucy took a seat and stretched her arms above her head. "While I'd heard you'd moved here, can't say I expected our paths to cross before I even got a place. So yeah, little weird." 

"So you're moving here too?" 

"I got offered a job with-" Lucy frowned. 

"The DSO?" 

"Yes. Those, so you know they exist." 

It briefly made Lucy wonder about how secure the secrecy of Kara's identity and the big secret government agency was. 

"Kara’s sister showed up with a whole lot of paperwork. What made you leave the military?" James asked. "I thought you loved the whole travelling thing." 

And she really did, there was something freeing about not having a place to set down roots. Being in a different city every few days and knowing every day was going to be different. 

But the more time Lucy spent thinking about it, the more she found herself questioning if, when the army recruited her, had they seen a girl with talent and potential? A girl from a family that had legacy within the ranks? Or had they seen a girl who was lost and directionless and had taken advantage of that to bolster their numbers?

Lucy wondered how much good she had been doing, or had she been following her father's agenda- whatever that may have been?

It kind of felt like she had been walking in his shadow, unaware of the darkness that surrounded them.

“I think… There’s an opportunity to do some good here, it feels like something is unfurling and I want to be around to help when it does.” Lucy replied eventually. 

“What about your father?”  
  
“Fuck him.”   
  
James laughed. “Fair enough. You already know my feelings on the guy.”

“I do, and i’m still sorry about how awful he was while we were together.”

“He never got in the way of us being happy though.” James pointed out. 

“Even if I let him whisk me away on what I thought was my dream assignment?” Lucy asked.

James frowned and for a moment it was easy for Lucy to forget that even though it had been a couple of years since they dated, James knew her well. He could read between the lines of what Lucy was saying.

“We broke up on mutual terms, Lucy. We were both heading in different directions.”

“And yet here we are.”  
  
“Here we are.” James agreed. “So, are we good?”   
  
“We’re good.” Lucy grinned. “Considering our mutual friend, I assume we’re going to end up seeing a lot more of each other.”   
  
“Speaking of our mutual friend, are you seeing anyone?”   
  
Lucy narrowed her eyes at James at the sudden shift. “No, why?”   
  
James shrugged. “I was just thinking, you and Kara seem to have clicked really quickly so I was just wondering if you and her were-”

Lucy didn’t mean to cut him off with a laugh. "I don't think Kara is interested in me like that." 

A part of Lucy felt like she was reaching, but if she was right (and let's face it, she was always right) then Kara already seemed to be developing feelings for someone else.

"Why not? Lucy you're gorgeous. Anyone would be lucky to date you." 

"Oh I know that." Lucy agreed. "But I genuinely mean it when I say me and Kara aren't going to happen." 

“Why not?”  
  
“You have a journalistic eye, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

\--

Kara paused at her desk and frowned down at the sweater that had appeared on it while she’d been bouncing between departments.

“Lucy is here.” Winn spoke up.

“Oh? Where did she go?”  
  
“She went off with James, do they know each other?” 

Kara shoved the sweater into her desk and logged into her computer. “Uh, yeah. Yeah they used to date.”

“Oh. Cool cool cool. Do you- How long ago?”   
  
“Not sure, didn’t ask.” Kara replied, frowning as she pulled up Cat’s calendar. 

She still hadn’t come back from recording her statement. Kara had already replanned most of the meetings of the day but if Cat didn’t come back soon then Kara was going to have to figure out where she could reschedule the last two meetings Cat had after lunch.

Speaking of lunch, Kara was beginning to get hungry. She’d forgotten to stock up on snacks and her body needed the extra calories anyway thanks to her metabolism, it didn’t help that it felt like her body was working overtime trying to repair the damage the bullet had done. 

Two things happened then.

From one direction, she picked out Lucy and James’s heartbeat slowly moving closer from the direction of James’s office. 

From the other, she heard Cat.

“Lucy and James are coming.” Kara said to Winn before jumping back up and heading into Cat’s office.

She poured a glass of water and turned around in time to see all three arrive. Lucy’s grin was wide and it was actually amusing to see Cat respond with an almost suspicious glare before gliding into the office.

“Kiera, it would appear that baby Lane has taken to circling your desk like some kind of stray kitten.” Cat said, approaching Kara.

The thing is, Cat is beautiful. This is a fact that Kara has known for years as she diligently watched her talk show every day and made a point of following her career until Kara eventually found herself at her hero's side. 

So Cat, beautiful. Well known fact. 

And this was true no matter what, but seeing Cat after she’s had a team of professional make-up artists work with her? The genuine glow she seemed to have after any public appearance. That was something else entirely and it never failed to leave Kara speechless.

“She just came to drop something off.” Kara shrugged and glanced over her shoulder to see the time on the many screens. “And I assume see if I wanted to get an extremely early lunch.”   
  
“Some people call that ‘brunch’, Kiera.” Cat moved past her to sit at her desk and Kara followed, sliding a coaster towards Cat and setting down the glass of water.

“How did recording go?” Kara asked instead, because not knowing what Cat had said in her statement was leaving Kara with a lot of anxiety and she was too impatient to wait for it to air and she couldn’t be sure that Cat really was _okay._

Kara had to remind herself to breathe. 

“Perfectly fine, I believe very little editing will be needed so they’re going to be broadcasting it in the next hour or so. You’re free to go with your stray if you so desire.”

Cat flipped open her laptop and pulled up her emails.

“Sure, but uh-”  
  
“Out with it, Kiera.”   
  
“Usually if you have a statement to make, you’d do it live- what changed?”   
  
Cat’s fingers seemed to trip over the keys before they stilled. She lifted her head up at Kara.

“I… Wanted to go at my own pace without the added pressure of potential technical difficulties that can arise from live broadcasting. Especially after yesterday's issues, I'd rather avoid that.”

“Makes sense.” Kara nodded. She could feel eyes on the back of her neck and wondered which of her friends were currently staring into the office. “I’ve rescheduled all the meetings from this morning but you only have two this afternoon, though I can reschedule those if you want me to. Did you want me to bring you anything for lunch?”  
  
“That won’t be necessary. Sushi from the usual place, and if you’re going to Noonan’s then bring me a latte back.” 

"Of course Ms. Grant, I'll be back in a bit." 

Kara turned around in time to see James and Winn avert their gazes while Lucy sat happily on Kara's desk, grinning in her direction. 

"You good?" Lucy asked once Kara had left Cat's office and reached them. 

"Slowly feeling less like I took a bullet." Kara replied. "Everything okay?" 

"Just dropping by." 

"You want to grab some lunch?" Kara asked. "Or brunch, I guess. Ms. Grant just gave me the okay to go now if I want to." 

Lucy hopped off the desk. "I'm up for that, will they still have breakfast food? I gotta say your sister needs a crash course in hospitality." 

"Yeah, that sounds like Alex." 

Lucy walked past, bumping her hip against Kara's as she passed. "Come on then superwolf, let's get you fed." 

Kara tried not to wince at the small shock of pain that went through her body, rolling her eyes at Lucy as she moved towards the elevator. 

She pressed a hand to her hip and moved to follow. 

\--

"Why do I have to be here for this?" Vasquez asked. 

"Because I don't like dealing with corpses and I could do with the moral support thank you very much." Alex replied. 

"You're just drawing blood." 

"And I would appreciate your support in this." 

Alex watched Vasquez stare at her for a long few seconds before dropping her gaze back down to the body between them and back up to Alex, an eyebrow raised disbelievingly.

“Cut the crap, Danvers. What’s going on? Is this about last night?”

Alex sighed and put her tools down. “Kinda.”  
  
“...So?”   
  
“CatCo. published an article yesterday about a guy being mugged in an alley, he was saved by someone in a hoody with ‘gold contact lenses’.”   
  
It wasn’t exactly hard to connect the dots and Vasquez raised both eyebrows when she’d figured it out.

“Ah, shit.”  
  
“Exactly.” 

“Have you told J’onn?”  
  
“Not yet, he only knows about last night. I didn’t even know until I saw the article this morning.”   
  
“Kara didn’t tell you?” Vasquez asked.

Alex sighed. “No, and that’s what I’m trying to understand.”

She wasn’t going to pretend that it didn’t hurt, nor could she figure out why Kara hadn’t told her.

What made it worse was that Lucy had known. That Kara had trusted someone she had only known for a few days over her own sister.

“Why didn’t she tell me, Vasquez?” Alex asked.

She could tell that Vasquez was uncomfortable, despite knowing each other for a couple of years and being one of the few people Alex considered a true friend, neither of them were particularly fond of emotional conversations.

“I don’t know Kara well enough to say for sure…” Vasquez began. She placed her hands on the autopsy table and quickly thought better of it, pulling her hands away from the body with a frown. “But maybe she thought you’d be mad?”

“I am mad.” Alex admitted. “Kinda. She knows how dangerous this all is. Making her officially part of the DSO was the safer option, especially with General Lane lurking around but it’s already brought her more attention, we’ve already got more werewolves moving onto the scene so moonlighting as some kind of Vigilante? It’s dangerous, Vasquez. This isn’t what I wanted for Kara.”

“Serious question, so don’t get pissy for me asking but… Have you asked Kara what _she_ wants?”

Apparently Alex’s silence was answer enough.

“I think you two need to sit down and talk, really talk, Danvers. But personally, I think you should trust her more. I know you’re trying to protect her but Kara knows the risks, she has been a werewolf for her entire life after all.”

“...I will, I think we’re overdue a proper talk. Thank you Vasquez.”  
  
“Yeah yeah, whatever. Can you hurry up and do what you need to do? Not really a fan of the whole ‘heart to heart over a corpse’ thing you’ve got going on.”

"Just give me five minute to get the samples I need, then we can get food."  
  
Vasquez stared at her for a long few moments. "You scare me, Danvers."

\--

“Sorry for like, hip checking you back there, did I hurt you?” Lucy asked.

“It’s fine, honestly.” Kara replied. “I’ve had worse and it’s healing okay.”

Lucy didn’t look entirely convinced but she let the matter drop, instead she turned to take in the other customers.

“It’s pretty busy, you sure you have time for this?”  
  
“Yeah it’ll be fine, Twyla knows I’m working and they’re really good at getting food out quick.”

“The more time I spend here the more I’m convinced there’s witchcraft at play.” Lucy murmured.

“That’s ridiculous, they’re just really good at their jobs.” Kara dismissed with a laugh. “But I never asked, what brought you here? There was no rush to drop that sweater off.”

“Oh right, first of all, your sister found the article from yesterday so heads up there.”  
  
Kara grimaced, even seeing their food coming did little to make her feel better. 

“We knew she was going to find out eventually.” Kara sighed. “What else?”  
  
“You…” Lucy trailed off, her gaze drifting somewhere behind Kara. “Actually, you might want to watch this.”   
  
Kara twisted in her seat to look at the tv and seeing Cat on the screen. She immediately focused most of her hearing on the tv.

“Can I get you guys anything else?” She heard Twyla ask, setting their food down.

“No, thank you. But could you maybe turn that up?” Lucy replied.

Kara filtered the rest of the noise out until all she could hear was Cat’s voice.

It was surreal to hear Cat telling her version of events, describing the moments before Kara’s arrival in enough detail to answer any questions that people who are listening but with enough professional distance to not let on exactly how she felt.

In a way, it frustrated Kara more.

Surely Cat couldn’t compartmentalise that well to not have been affected by last night. And Kara couldn’t figure out how to bridge the gap between them to get Cat to open up to her.

_“-And the reason I am able to tell you this story today is because of the heroics of one woman.”_

Behind her, Kara heard Lucy choke on her drink but Kara didn’t dare to look away from the tv.

_“And while It isn’t one hundred percent confirmed, I have reason to believe she was the hooded figure involved in the standoff with the Wolf-Man of National City and another mugging that happened two nights ago. This woman, for whatever reason has decided to bring some much needed light to this city and for her actions last night, I am grateful.”_

Cat sounded genuine, that was what threw Kara. Her eyes were bright and determined and that should have been enough of an indicator of where Cat was going with this speech.

 _“So this is my public appeal to you, If you or anybody who knows you is listening._ _I would like to meet you, to write about you, so wherever you are… Reach out. For anybody who has crossed paths with her, we want your stories.”_

Cat’s face disappeared from the screen and was replaced with the CatCo. logo. Kara stared at the tv for a few moments longer before reluctantly turning back towards Lucy, expecting some level of disappointment at Kara drawing so much attention to herself but instead, Kara found herself met with a smile.

“So, it sounds like you just became Cat Grant’s hero, how do you feel?”  
  
“Um.” Kara frowned. 

She didn't know how to explain the warmth in her chest, the quiet pride at knowing her actions had had such an effect on Cat, even if the woman didn't know it was Kara who had saved her. 

Cat had been someone Kara had looked up to for years. She never thought there would be a possibility for the roles to be reversed. 

And the more Kara thought about how close she had come to losing Cat the last night, the more it left an aching pain in her chest, a lingering thought in the back of her head that said " _What if it happens again?"_

She didn't know how to put all those thoughts into an answer, so Kara settled for something easier. 

"Strange." 

Lucy raised an eyebrow as her expression shifted to something more thoughtful and Kara got the impression that her answer wasn't what Lucy was expecting. 

Lucy also looked like there was something on her mind, a question that was lying in wait. 

Whatever it was, Lucy kept it to herself as some kind of realisation hit her. 

"Oh shit, um, Kara?" 

"...Yeah?"

"How bad will The DSO react when they find out Cat is looking for you?" 

"As a whole? Probably not too bad? I mean they can't really interfere directly without raising more questions but Alex… Especially because she knows about the other time too, she won't be happy. Plus I don’t know how much J’onn knows and if that werewolf and her pack see it…." 

Lucy frowned and grabbed her phone from the table. "You need to get back to CatCo."

Kara was already waving Twyla down. "And you need to get back to The DSO." 

Lucy got to her feet. "Meet up later? Barring any disasters." 

Kara wanted to know what was on Lucy's mind, so despite the anxiety of not knowing, she found herself nodding. 

"And we definitely need doggy bags for our food." Lucy added.

\--

"Oh God, Lucy just texted me." 

Alex looked up from her lunch and frowned at Vasquez from across the table. 

"You gave Lucy your number? 

Vasquez raised an eyebrow. "Work phone, she seems solid enough but I'm not about to start throwing my number around." 

That made a lot more sense, Alex had known Vasquez for years and still didn't know where she lived. That woman loved her personal space. 

"What'd she say?" Alex asked. 

Vasquez dropped her fork and frowned down at her phone. 

“It’s… A bunch of emojis.”  
  
“What are they?”   
  
“Cat, speech bubble, shocked face, gun, puppy, police car, clapping hands, eyes, magnifying glass, another puppy and a woman running.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

"I mean, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and assume it has something to do with Kara, Cat and what happened last night." Vasquez replied. 

She typed on her phone for a few moments while Alex watched silently. When Vasquez's eyebrows shot up, Alex sighed and pushed her food aside. 

"Okay, I think I know what she's talking about." 

"Why do I get the feeling that I'm not going to like this?" 

"Cat released a statement about what happened last night, she's also made a public appeal for the 'Vigilante who saved her' to reach out." 

Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. Honestly, give her an army of vampires over politics and press any day. 

"Fucking hell." Alex pushed her chair back. "Get J'onn, I'm calling Lucy." 

Vasquez gave her a thumbs up and shovelled another mouthful of food into her mouth before getting up. 

Alex made her way down to the control room as she hit Lucy's name. 

_"What’s up?"_

"Lucy, what the fuck was with the emojis?" 

_“Cat gave a press conference about being attacked last night and she is going to make a plea to look for the Vigilante who saved her, aka Kara and that I was on my way. Honestly I thought that was obvious.”_

“Why didn’t you just say that??”  
  
 _“I did!”_

Alex sighed heavily. "Have you spoken to Kara?" 

Lucy was silent for a few seconds. 

_"Yeah, I was with her when it went public."_ Lucy replied. _"She's gone back into work, I'm on my way."_

That ruled out calling Kara, she could only imagine that she'd be running around CatCo. for the rest of the day. Still, Alex made a note to get out in time to meet her later.

"Just… Get here as soon as you can, okay? We need to figure out how much of a risk this is for Kara." 

_"Whatever you say."_

\--

It was impossible to get a moment alone with Cat. 

Kara should have expected it, but the rest of her day was spent scheduling meetings for next week, chasing up the designer for Cat's dress for the gala on Saturday and running around making sure departments were hitting their deadlines. Kara was trying so hard to make sure everything ran smoothly while Cat was otherwise preoccupied. 

It wasn't until she noticed a text from Lucy that Kara forced herself to stop, to sit at her desk, let herself breathe and really _think._

"What's wrong?" Winn asked as he noticed she hadn't moved for several minutes. 

_Heads up, about to have a meeting with J'onn and the others about your extra curricula activities._

The yawny face emoji did little to lighten the text. 

"They're having a meeting about me at The DSO." Kara replied. 

"Because of the Cat thing?" 

"Pretty much." 

"What are they gonna do? Ban you from doing it?" Winn laughed. 

"Maybe? I don't know, I'm kind of new to the whole secret government thing." Kara frowned down at her phone for a few more moments before dropping it on her desk. "Am I making a mistake here?" 

"I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to be a good person, Kara." Winn replied. "I wouldn't stress too much about what's happening there at the moment, they can't make decisions like that without speaking to you first." 

Kara hummed but remained silent. If she were being honest it made her angry to know that meeting was happening. That they were talking about her and the choices she made without having her be there to speak for herself. 

But Winn was right, there was no point in thinking about something happening across town at the moment. She had work to think about. 

More importantly, the calendar alert she'd just received from Cat's inbox. 

"Oh no." 

"What is it?" Winn asked. 

"Board meeting tomorrow." Kara replied. "Only just scheduled. They never do that, even short notice for them usually means a couple days in advance." 

She glanced over to Cat and watched as she paced the office, phone pressed to her ear. A clear frown to her features. 

Part of Kara considered listening in but Winn interrupted her before she could. 

"It's gotta be linked to last night right?" 

"Too much of a coincidence to not be." Kara agreed. 

She glanced up at one of the TV's mounted on the wall, rolling her eyes as Maxwell Lord's face filled the screen. 

He was being interviewed for CatCo. he was somewhat of a regular on their news feed as he had a longstanding friendship with Cat. 

Well, friendship was putting it somewhat lightly, Kara knew there had been speculation for years about romantic involvement but Cat had never confirmed nor denied it. 

Kara wasn't a fan of him. The 'attractive eligible bachelor' thing just came across as kind of smug. 

She was ready to turn back to Winn when the image on the screen changed to a map. 

She'd seen that map before. 

"Winn… Why is Lord on TV?" 

"Promoting the launch of his new cell phone towers, he’s doing a trial of them around and inside National City and areas before hoping to expand across the country." Winn replied, his gaze was fixed on his own screen. "That's the reason why he's having that gala right? Guy loves a party."

"Winn." Kara said firmly as she pointed at the TV. "Where have you seen that map before?" 

Winn finally looked up and it was a short waiting game for Kara to watch realisation dawn on his face. 

"No fucking way." He mumbled. 

Kara moved over to stand behind him as he pulled up another map.

His screen filled with the map Winn had compiled during the werewolf rampage. A series of deaths linked to animal attacks in the days leading up to when he reached National City, with everything else that had happened since they had stopped him, it had taken a backseat.

Kara was just glad that Winn hadn’t deleted it.

They both looked from his screen back up to the tv in time to catch one last glimpse of the map it was displaying before the image shifted back to Maxwell Lord.

“It matched, didn’t it?” Kara asked.

“Definitely.”

“We need to meet up with James. As soon as possible.”

\--

"Ms. Grant… I saw your statement." 

Cat looked up from her phone as Kara set some layouts down, she didn't make any attempt to look at Cat, rather she busied herself with moving around the office. 

"Impressive wasn't it?" Cat replied when Kara didn't offer anything else. "Traffic on our website is through the roof." 

Kara was quiet for another few moments before shooting a curious look at Cat. She turned back to the table and adjusted the magazines. 

"I think it was brave." Kara settled on eventually. A moment later she finally met Cat's eyes. "I think you're brave, for talking about it. I know you said that you're fine and everything but… It sounded scary and I admire that you were able to talk about it."

It would seem that Kara would remain a mystery to her. 

"Well… It gives strength to others, I'm not the first person this has happened to. I'm fortunate enough that the vigilante happened to be in the right place at the right time." 

"Is that why you want to find her?" Kara asked. "Because she saved you?" 

“Partially.” Cat admitted. “There’s a story there and I want to find it.”

Kara seemed at least a little bit satisfied with that answer, but it still did nothing to ease the worry in her eyes.

Cat didn’t know what to say to make that expression disappear, it was easier to focus on work though, so Cat held out another set of layouts towards Kara while dragging the next set towards her.

“Take these to James. There’s only a few changes that need to be made.”  
  
“Of course Ms. Grant.”

As she watched Kara head towards James’s office, Cat allowed herself a few moments to entertain the three questions that burned most prominently in her mind.

  1. Why was Kara so concerned about her emotional wellbeing?
  2. Why did Kara flinch so hard when baby Lane bumped into her?



And more importantly.

3\. How did Kara know the Vigilante was a woman before Cat had disclosed that information?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first of all, I'm so sorry it took so long to update. Didn't really get the rest I wanted and work has been pure chaos. But general life drama aside, i hope you guys enjoyed the chapter and that you're all staying safe
> 
> Next update coming soon

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [here](https://yashastrongarms.tumblr.com/)  
> and Joy [here](https://danvers-grant.tumblr.com/), and her AO3 is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diannaprince/pseuds/danvers-grant) show her some love!


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